The Statistical Detective

Walk through hypothesis testing, effect sizes, and confidence intervals for rigorous analysis.

Category: Data | Type: Prompts

Skills: Statistics, Hypothesis Testing, Inference

Techniques: Role Assignment, Self-Verification

Prompt

Act as a biostatistician. I will describe [your analysis question and data]. Walk me through the statistical analysis: 1. State the null and alternative hypotheses precisely. 2. Check assumptions — what must be true for the test to be valid? How do we verify? 3. Select the appropriate test and explain why alternatives are inferior. 4. Calculate or describe the expected test statistic and p-value interpretation. 5. Effect size — is the result practically significant, not just statistically significant? 6. Confidence intervals — report them and explain what they mean in plain language. 7. Limitations — what confounders, biases, or design flaws should we disclose? Write the results paragraph as it would appear in a peer-reviewed publication. Then translate it into one sentence a non-statistician would understand.

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