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There are always a large number of posters in the statistics section of math forums ( - in physicsforums, but also on other math websites) who present their situation as: "I 've collected all this data, how how do I analyze it?".
These posts are not a random sampling of the population of all people who analyze data. I'd think that they over represent those who are confused about the procedure. However, when I think back on my own education, statistics courses didn't emphasize that one should plan the statistical analysis of data before the decisions about how to collect data are finalized. (The only nod to that problem was the topic of how large sample sizes should be to give certain levels of "confidence".)
There is a discipline called "The Design Of Experiments", but it appears to focus on a very specific kind of model for the data, one where the dependent variables are multinomial functions of the independent variables. (Is my characterization unfair?)
I'm curious whether the modern university curricula teaches courses about the design of experiments in the general sense of the word "design". Or are students still encouraged to take the shock treatment - rush to get the data collected and then... hmmm...How am I going to analyze this?
These posts are not a random sampling of the population of all people who analyze data. I'd think that they over represent those who are confused about the procedure. However, when I think back on my own education, statistics courses didn't emphasize that one should plan the statistical analysis of data before the decisions about how to collect data are finalized. (The only nod to that problem was the topic of how large sample sizes should be to give certain levels of "confidence".)
There is a discipline called "The Design Of Experiments", but it appears to focus on a very specific kind of model for the data, one where the dependent variables are multinomial functions of the independent variables. (Is my characterization unfair?)
I'm curious whether the modern university curricula teaches courses about the design of experiments in the general sense of the word "design". Or are students still encouraged to take the shock treatment - rush to get the data collected and then... hmmm...How am I going to analyze this?