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Operational Definitions: The First Step in a Statistical Analysis (Even after...
By Matthew Barsalou, guest blogger. Minitab Statistical Software can assist us in our analysis of data, but we must make judgments when selecting the data for an analysis. A good operational...
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How to Explore Interactions with Line Plots
The line plot is an incredibly agile but frequently overlooked tool in the quest to better understand your processes.In any process, whether it's baking a cake or processing loan forms, many factors...
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A Closer Look at Probability and Survival Plots
I recently fielded an interesting question about the probability and survival plots in Minitab Statistical Software's Reliability/Survival menus:Is there a one-to-one match between the confidence...
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3 Features to Make You Glad You're You When You Have to Clean Data in Minitab
When someone gives you data to analyze, you can gauge how your life is going by what you've received. Get a Minitab file, or even comma-separated values, and everything feels fine. Get a PDF file, and...
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What Is the F-test of Overall Significance in Regression Analysis?
Previously, I’ve written about how to interpret regression coefficients and their individual P values.I’ve also written about how to interpret R-squared to assess the strength of the relationship...
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How Is Cpk Calculated When the Subgroup Size Is 1?
When data are collected in subgroups, it’s easy to understand how the variation can be calculated within each of the subgroups based the subgroup range or the subgroup standard deviation.When data is...
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Using Quality Tools Like FMEA in Pathogen Testing
Before I joined Minitab, I worked for many years in Penn State's College of Agricultural Sciences as a writer and editor. I frequently wrote about food science and particularly food safety, as I...
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American Pharoah and the Belmont Stakes: A Statistical Journey through Horse...
by Jeff Parks, guest bloggerBeing from Kentucky, horse racing comes natural to me. Like nearly everyone else, I watched and was moved by American Pharoah’s Triple Crown run, which ended an historic...
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Are the Chicago Blackhawks Currently the Luckiest Team in Sports?
With their victory in game 6 over the Tampa Bay Lightning, the Chicago Blackhawks won their 3rd Stanley Cup Championship in the last 6 years. This is an incredible feat that no doubt means the...
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Why Is Continuous Data "Better" than Categorical or Discrete Data?
Earlier, I wrote about the different types of data statisticians typically encounter. In this post, we're going to look at why, when given a choice in the matter, we prefer to analyze continuous data...
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3 Ways to Clean Up Data So You Can Promote Public Dialog
"By publishing the historical data, public dialogue that results from the data release can be more productive because you’ll be able to discuss changes over time."— Denice Ross, 5/17/2015Last month,...
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How MLB's Understanding of Line Drive Data Fails to Protect Pitchers
Last month the ESPN series Outside the Lines reported on major league pitchers suffering serious injuries from being struck in the head by line drives, and efforts MLB is making towards having...
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Applying DOE for Great Grilling, part 1
Design of Experiments (DOE) has a reputation for difficulty, and to an extent, this statistical method deserves that reputation. While it's easy to grasp the basic idea—acquire the maximum amount of...
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Applying DOE for Great Grilling, part 2
Design of Experiments is an extremely powerful statistical method, we added a DOE tool to the Assistant in Minitab 17 to make it more accessible to more people.Since it's summer here, I'm applying the...
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Pencils and Plots: Assessing the Normality of Data
By Matthew Barsalou, guest blogger. Many statistical tests assume the data being tested came from a normal distribution. Violating the assumption of normality can result in incorrect conclusions. For...
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Ghostbusting Spaces in Minitab
It’s been almost 5 years since I used a quotation from Ghostbusters to introduce one of my early blog posts. But as we’re getting a few bits of entertainment news about the next installment in the...
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T-tests for Speed Tests: How Fast Is Internet Speed?
Every now and then I’ll test my Internet speed at home using such sites as http://speedtest.comcast.net or http://www.att.com/speedtest/. My need to perform these tests could stem from the...
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Lessons from a Statistical Analysis Gone Wrong, part 1
I don't like the taste of crow. That's a shame, because I'm about to eat a huge helping of it. I'm going to tell you how I messed up an analysis. But in the process, I learned some new lessons and was...
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Lessons from a Statistical Analysis Gone Wrong, Part 2
Last time, I told you how I had double-checked the analysis in a post that involved running the Johnson transformation on a set of data before doing normal capability analysis on it. A reader asked why...
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Lessons from a Statistical Analysis Gone Wrong, Part 3
If you've read the first two parts of this tale, you know it started when I published a post that involved transforming data for capability analysis. When an astute reader asked why Minitab didn't seem...
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