ABSTRACT
A statistical analysis can be thought of as a story. Every story has a theme, characters, and a plot that ties everything together. For an analysis project, the goal of the project is the theme, the data being used are the characters in the story, and the analysis is the plot. While a story may not directly state its theme, a statistical analysis always should state its theme, that is, it must have a clearly defined goal and/or hypothesis/hypothesis. The project goal should include the study population and the outcome variable(s). The goal is used to determine what data needs to be collected and what type of statistical methods are needed to analyze the data. Much as characters are important to a story, data is fundamental for any statistical analysis. Thinking about data as a statistician thinks about data can give a smoother flow to the data analysis process.
