Journal Article

Ten simple rules for getting started with statistics in graduate school

Schroeder, Vanessa, Zitomer, Rachel A., Kerstens, Mark, Ruth, Kayla, Harrington, Alan, Revekant, Claire, Perry, Lindsey, Adrean, Lindsay, Cornelius, Jamie, Woodis, Ethan, Austin, Suzanne, Dinkins, Jonathan, Owens, Terrah, Sink, Chelsea, Rivers, James W., Kim, Hankyu, Karr, Jessica, Dachenhaus, Jonathan, Valente, Jonathon J.

2022

Overview

[...]although the primary audience for the rules we provide are new graduate students, we note that the principles we raise are broadly applicable to researchers in a wide range of disciplines. [...]it is still important to have a thorough understanding of the background literature and the research question(s) that motivated data collection. [...]rather than assuming that such an “inherited” study lacks room for improvement, we recommend that students critically examine the choices made in data collection, understand their strengths and weaknesses, and independently assess whether the resulting data are sufficient to address the research question(s) being examined. Units in the treatment group are subjected to an experimental manipulation, whereas those in the control group are not, and the average response across experimental units in the 2 groups is then compared. Because other factors are held constant, differences detected in the treatment group relative to the control group can be attributed to the experimental manipulation. [...]the reasonable scope of inference for a research project is typically constrained by the realities of data collection. [...]defining the scope of inference for a study involves thinking carefully about the chosen sampling approach, potential sources of bias, and acknowledging how they limit the generalizability of a study.

• Publisher: Public Library of Science,Public Library of Science (PLoS)
• Subject: Advisors / Biology and Life Sciences / Computational Biology - education / Computer and Information Sciences / Data analysis / Data collection / Education, Graduate / Engineering and Technology / Experiments / Graduate schools / Graduate students / Graduate studies / Graduate work / Hypotheses / Independent study / Inference / Learning / Mathematical statistics / People and Places / Physical Sciences / Questions / Research and Analysis Methods / Research projects / Schools / Social Sciences / Students / Study and teaching / Universities and colleges