These twelve tips are the backbone of our Applied Environmental Statistics course. They were also sent out to our newsletter subscribers in March 2014, so if you find them helpful, sign up for our newsletter. Please send us comments or feedback, if you’d like.

— Dennis Helsel

Online at:

Click to see the full tip

Plot the Data First!
Treat Outliers Like Children: correct them when needed, but never throw them out.
Objectives drive which statistics to use.
The hardest thing for a human being to do.
Transforming data requires re-transforming solutions.
Understand the assumptions behind your methods.
Maximize the signal to noise ratio.
Meet the demands of regression.
"All models are wrong; some models are useful" (G. E. P. Box), so choose the least hopelessly wrong model.
Know your target for trend analysis.
Nondetects: never substitute. Mine the information in the proportions.
“An approximate answer to the right question is worth a great deal more than a precise answer to the wrong question."