COMMON MISTEAKS MISTAKES IN USING STATISTICS: Spotting and Avoiding Them

Introduction       Types of Mistakes        Suggestions       Resources       Table of Contents      About   Blog


About This Web Site

Martha K. Smith retired as Professor of Mathematics in 2009 from the University of Texas at Austin. Although her field was abstract algebra (with some dabbling in analysis), she became interested in statistics in the late 1990's, and has taught statistics from then until retiring. Coming from the rigorous background of mathematics, she naturally asked why an assertion was true and had the habit of looking for errors. Thus as she read more in various fields that use statistics, she became aware that there are a lot of misconceptions about the field. Hence, as a retirement project, she is creating this website, and has recently started a blog, Musings on Using and Misusing Statistics.

The site assumes that the reader has had at least one course in statistics, but tries to allow for the possibility that that might not have been a very good course, or that a lot may have been forgotten.

The site is not intended to be all-inclusive; I have tried to give references for further inquiry. This is also an ongoing project.

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Last updated April 10, 2012