Sample Essay on Generalization and Sniffy the Virtual Rat

Sample Essay on Generalization and Sniffy the Virtual RatA sample essay on generalization and sniffy the virtual rat has been used for years to help students get a good foundation in the essential concepts of statistics. If you use it, I'm sure that you'll learn more from it than you ever thought possible. Even more, you'll find it helps your average student become a better statistician.This sample essay was written by Dr. John Cotter of Queen Mary University of London, and it was used as a reading guide for graduate and postgraduate students, particularly when they were writing their first paper. Basically, he wanted to show that statistics is not a set of techniques, or a particular way of doing things. Instead, statistics are simply the use of statistical tools to solve problems.The sample essay itself is fairly simple. There are only six sections, each of which deal with a different topic. The first section is the Introduction, and this is a question and answer section. It contai ns facts about sampling errors, the significance of comparing different data sets, and the importance of identifying the proper statistical methods.In the second section, the topic is Empirical studies. The question in this section is whether statistical methods can be used to make conclusions about a specific phenomenon, such as the popularity of baseball. It also asks whether the effectiveness of statistical methods depends on what you are trying to learn.In the third section, the topic is Estimation. This section talks about statistics related to odds ratios, confidence intervals, and multivariate analysis.In the fourth section, the topic is Statistical inference. In this section, the student is asked how to find a value for a group effect, and what can be done about 'significance' issues.In the fifth section, the topic is Interpretation. The question in this section is how to interpret a point estimate that is statistically significant, and what can be done about results that de pend on the assumptions that were made in the analysis.The last section is What can students do with these topics? It answers a few questions: how to analyze statistically significant data, what is meant by the word statistical, how to build up a statistic from a data set, and what is meant by data analysis.