{"id":4222,"date":"2024-04-29T14:53:05","date_gmt":"2024-04-29T12:53:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.psyctc.org\/psyctc\/?post_type=docs&#038;p=4222"},"modified":"2024-04-29T14:53:05","modified_gmt":"2024-04-29T12:53:05","password":"","slug":"exploratory-data-analysis-eda","status":"publish","type":"docs","link":"https:\/\/www.psyctc.org\/psyctc\/glossary2\/exploratory-data-analysis-eda\/","title":{"rendered":"Exploratory data analysis (EDA)"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>A statistical approach, methodology, inspired by John Tukey.  Tukey was something of a polymath and I recommend the <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/John_Tukey\" title=\"\">Wikipedia article about him<\/a> not least  for the glorious first hand description of one of his lectures!  I think I am pretty much a follower of the EDA tradition these days but perhaps compromised a bit from his pure form of EDA by the pressures to publish in journals that continue to expect inferential statistics and &#8220;confirmatory&#8221; analyses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Details<\/h4>\n\n\n\n<p>EDA overlaps with descriptive statistics and into the realm of statistical estimation, i.e. confidence intervals but it is apt that Tukey&#8217;s term was &#8220;Data Analysis&#8221; not &#8220;statistics&#8221;.  I can&#8217;t do better than quote from the Wikipedia article about EDA:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p>The objectives of EDA are to:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Enable unexpected discoveries in the data<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Suggest hypotheses about the causes of observed phenomena<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Assess assumptions on which statistical inference will be based<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Support the selection of appropriate statistical tools and techniques<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Provide a basis for further data collection through surveys or experiments<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<cite><a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Exploratory_data_analysis#Development\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\" title=\"\">https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Exploratory_data_analysis#Development<\/a><\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>Those strike me as exactly the objectives we should have for most of our quantitative research in the fields of MH, W-B and therapies, we shouldn&#8217;t be just trying to come up with pseudo-certainties from systematic reviews of randomised controlled trials.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Try also<\/h4>\n\n\n\n<p>Confidence intervals<br><a href=\"https:\/\/www.psyctc.org\/psyctc\/glossary2\/descriptive-statistics\/\" title=\"\">Descriptive statistics<\/a><br>Estimation<br><a href=\"https:\/\/www.psyctc.org\/psyctc\/glossary2\/null-hypothesis-significance-testing-nhst-paradigm\/\" title=\"\">Null hypothesis significance testing (NHST) paradigm<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Chapters<\/h4>\n\n\n\n<p>This approach runs through the entire OMbook but we didn&#8217;t mention it explicitly partly to avoid getting into culture wars!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Online resources<\/h4>\n\n\n\n<p>Not yet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Dates<\/h4>\n\n\n\n<p>First created 29.iv.24.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A statistical approach, methodology, inspired by John Tukey. Tukey was something of a polymath and I recommend the Wikipedia article about him not least for the glorious first hand description of one of his lectures! I think I am pretty much a follower of the EDA tradition these days but perhaps compromised a bit from &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.psyctc.org\/psyctc\/glossary2\/exploratory-data-analysis-eda\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Exploratory data analysis (EDA)<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"doc_category":[18],"glossaries":[],"doc_tag":[],"knowledge_base":[],"class_list":["post-4222","docs","type-docs","status-publish","hentry","doc_category-om-book"],"year_month":"2026-04","word_count":255,"total_views":"888","reactions":{"happy":"0","normal":"0","sad":"0"},"author_info":{"name":"chris","author_nicename":"chris","author_url":"https:\/\/www.psyctc.org\/psyctc\/author\/chris\/"},"doc_category_info":[{"term_name":"All OM book glossary entries","term_url":"https:\/\/www.psyctc.org\/psyctc\/glossary\/non-knowledgebase\/om-book\/"}],"doc_tag_info":[],"knowledge_base_info":[],"knowledge_base_slug":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.psyctc.org\/psyctc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/docs\/4222","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.psyctc.org\/psyctc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/docs"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.psyctc.org\/psyctc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/docs"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.psyctc.org\/psyctc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.psyctc.org\/psyctc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4222"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.psyctc.org\/psyctc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/docs\/4222\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4226,"href":"https:\/\/www.psyctc.org\/psyctc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/docs\/4222\/revisions\/4226"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.psyctc.org\/psyctc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4222"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"doc_category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.psyctc.org\/psyctc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/doc_category?post=4222"},{"taxonomy":"glossaries","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.psyctc.org\/psyctc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/glossaries?post=4222"},{"taxonomy":"doc_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.psyctc.org\/psyctc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/doc_tag?post=4222"},{"taxonomy":"knowledge_base","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.psyctc.org\/psyctc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/knowledge_base?post=4222"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}