Business Statistics Made Easy in SAS

Step 3: Interpret the Pattern

Introduction to Interpreting Patterns

If a pattern is detected in Step 2, the second step is to interpret this pattern in as much detail, and with as much creativity, as you can. This is typically where many researchers fail, because it’s one thing to find a pattern but another to know what to do about it.

Steps in Interpreting Statistical Patterns

The following are steps that I usually advocate:

1. Summarize the pattern into statistical coefficients and parameters (the model): In Step 2 (the previous section) we discussed the fact that finding patterns in data most often compares the actual data to a mathematical model, which is a precise data relationship, like a normal distribution, an exact correlation-type ...