2.8 Data and questions: summary

In this section you have met some real data sets and briefly considered some of the questions you might ask of them. They will be referred to and investigated in the remaining sections of this course. Some general principles that govern the efficacy and quality of data summaries and displays will be formulated. As you will discover, the main requirements of any good statistical summary/display are that it is informative, easy to construct, visually appealing and readily assimilated by a non-expert.