By: Douglas Allen
09/10/2015
It’s a cold winter’s night in northern New Hampshire. You go out to the woodshed to grab a couple more logs, but as you approach, your hear a rustling inside the shed. You’ve gotten close enough to know you have a critter in the woodpile. You run back inside, bolt the door, hunker down with your .30–06, and prepare for a cold, fireless night.
Analyzing data using common tools like f-tests, t-tests, transformations, and ANOVA methods are a lot like that scenario. They can tell you that you’ve got a critter in the woodshed, but they can’t tell you whether it’s a possum or a black bear. You need to take a look inside to figure this out. Limiting data analysis to the results that you get from the tools cited above is almost always going to lead to missed information and, often, to wrong decisions. Charting is the way to take a look inside your data.