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Statistics Essentials For Dummies
book

Statistics Essentials For Dummies

by Deborah J. Rumsey
May 2019
Beginner content levelBeginner
192 pages
4h 8m
English
For Dummies
Content preview from Statistics Essentials For Dummies

Chapter 13

A Checklist for Judging Experiments

IN THIS CHAPTER

Bullet The added value of experiments

Bullet Criteria for a good experiment

Bullet Action items for evaluating an experiment

In this chapter, you go behind the scenes of experiments — the driving force of medical studies and other investigations in which comparisons are made. You find out the difference between experiments and observational studies and discover what experiments can do for you, how they’re supposed to be done, and how you can spot misleading results.

Experiments versus Observational Studies

Although many different types of studies exist, you can boil them all down to basically two different types: experiments and observational studies. An observational study is just what it sounds like: a study in which the researcher merely observes the subjects and records the information. No intervention takes place, no changes are introduced, and no restrictions or controls are imposed. For example, a survey is an observational study. An experiment is a study that doesn’t simply observe subjects in their natural state, but deliberately applies treatments to them in a controlled situation and records the outcomes (for example, medical ...

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Publisher Resources

ISBN: 9781119590309Purchase book