Content by Donald J. Wheeler
All Outliers Are EvidenceRemoving the extreme values is always a serious mistake.
Sun, 05/03/2009 - 15:07
Many have been taught that they must remove outliers prior to analysis. This is because much of modern statistics is concerned with creating a mathematical model for the data. Because all these models are created using algorithms, they tend to be…
No Data Have Meaning Without ContextHow should you organize and plot your data?
Tue, 03/31/2009 - 11:27
As Davis Balestracci frequently emphasized in his column, “RealWorldSPC,” published in Quality Digest for four years, it is fundamental to understand the context of the data before you begin to do any computations. It is the background for your…
Probability Models Don’t Generate Your Data Don’t start your analysis by asking, “How are these data distributed?”
Fri, 02/27/2009 - 10:19
The number of major hurricanes in the Atlantic since 1940 (as we considered in my February column, “First, Look at the Data”) are shown as a histogram in figure 1, below. Some analysts would begin their treatment of these data by considering…
First, Look at the DataWhat can we learn from the historical record?
Thu, 01/29/2009 - 14:03
I recently received a data set consisting of the number of major hurricanes in the North Atlantic from 1940 to 2007. (Major hurricanes are those that reach Category 3 status or higher at some point during their existence.) The first step in…
Different Answers to a Common QuestionNo data have meaning apart from their context
Mon, 07/28/2025 - 12:54
The engineer came into the statistician’s office and asked, “How can I compare a couple of averages? I have 50 values from each machine and want to compare the machines.” The statistician answered, “That’s easy. We can use a two-sample t-test.” “…