Statistical rules of thumb Gerald van Belle
Publisher: Wiley

While reading Bart Yasso's My Life on the Run, I came across his predictor for marathon times, "Yasso 800s." Yasso was in the habit of doing a 10 x 800m track workout; his rest in between each item was a 400m jog. He noticed that his average 800m Burfoot doesn't seem to have done any statistical analysis, or even any research other than asking a few running buddies about their workouts and marathon times. With five minutes to speak to the publishers of many of the top science journals, I tried to distill the lessons learned about scientists and social media to a short set of “rules of thumb.” I was not surprised at all when the panel of scientists at the end of the day .. I won't argue the specific merits of the Berkeley study with you, statistical analysis of sociological studies is not my area of expertise. Sources for Further Statistical Information. But that's a complement to judgment. Statistical neglect – instead of subjectively assessing small probabilities and continuously updating them, people choose to use rules-of-thumb (if any heuristics), which can introduce systematic biases in their decisions. As a general rule of thumb, the more biological replicates you have, the better your statistical confidence will be. Than rules of thumb to weigh essentially unquantifiable risks for political purposes. It turns out my work library has a copy, which has been fun to skim, or should I say, to thumb through. Intangible Assets including goodwill and leasehold may be included, but normally only in Rules of Thumb based on earnings/cash flow. So statistics can play a very useful role in testing these rules of thumb, and sometimes things which you think are working are not actually working. If you're of a rigorous turn of mind, you can get a pretty good handle on risks in repetitive situations that are susceptible to statistical analysis. Despite decades of careful data collection and mathematical and statistical research, on many large questions we have little more than rules of thumb. That's not a substitute for judgment. Gerard van Belle's Statistical Rules of Thumb has piqued my curiosity at conferences. This workshop will use iNZight visualisation tools and other simulation activities to build a conceptual understanding of margin of error, and the “rules of thumb” for testing claims in statistically-based reports. If you want to read more about calculating your ideal samples size, try and google for statistical power and required sample size.