Successful statistical analysis

It is worthwhile to mention some key points in this section, dealing with ensuring a successful (or at least productive) statistical analysis effort.

Note

You may find that most of these are perhaps common sense notions, but some may not be.

1. As soon as you can, decide on your goal or objective. You need to know what the win is, that is, what the problem or idea is that is driving the analysis effort. In addition, you need to make sure that, whatever is driving the analysis, the result obtained must be measurable in some way. This metric or performance indicator must be identified early.
2. Identify key levers. This means that once you have established your goals and a way to measure performance towards obtaining those goals, you also need to find out what has an effect on the performance towards obtaining each goal.
3. Conduct a thorough data collection. Typically, the more data the better, but in the absence of quantity, always go with quality.
4. Clean your data. Make...