With technological advancement, statistics has become a real game-changer. Thanks to it, entrepreneurs, companies, and large organizations can evaluate their target audience, profits, the success of their products, and many more.
Statistics is also widely used in academia. Students of various degrees, such as Linguistics, Math, and even Marketing, use statistical analyses for various aims. However, writing a good stats report is challenging. Besides having at least a rudimentary knowledge of math, you should also know what methods to apply, data to locate, and formulas to use. Add up a tight deadline, and you can feel your anxiety level surge.
Clearly, the easiest way to get your report done is to turn to services, such as GPALabs, where you can get professional help promptly. However, you are more than capable of nailing the task yourself, composing an accurate, exclusive, and, above all else, meaningful stats report. Ready to learn how? Keep reading the article to find out.
Getting to know what you are expected of doing
Whether you are a student or a full-time employee, writing a statistical report must have its prerequisites. That is, the report could show how a trend or habit has changed over time. Or it can report how sales of a given product have dropped or spiked. Therefore, regardless of your status and occupation, make sure you know what you are asked to write about.
Look at questions posed by your teacher or manager and try to locate keywords. Highlight them and comprehend what they mean. Stats reports may touch upon multiple actions. For instance, you may need to analyze data, interpret it, give assumptions, argue, explain, etc.
quality vs. quantity
Statistics always works with data, which is typically divided into qualitative and quantitative. They both have peculiarities and are used by professional statisticians differently. For example, qualitative data is more preferred when approaching the topic more creatively and uniquely. However, qualitative methods are less desired because they aren’t representative. Plus, they might make a report excessively subjective.
Experts usually tip the scales in favor of quantitative approaches because they rely on data. By collecting and processing data, researchers can come up with various hypotheses and test them. These methods ultimately allow us to generate results from huge data chunks. That’s why quantitative data is used more often.
Now, we don’t say that you should eschew qualitative approaches. However subjective they might be, they are still crucial in many reports. But we recommend you make a significant part of your project quantitative.
Making your report’s description plain
Many statistics reports are ill-fated. And not because of wrongly used methods, inaccurate data, or low-quality figures. But because they fail to provide a clear description of their study. Such reports may have top-notch, eye-opening results. But they end up in a drawer, forgotten because they haven’t analyzed the task’s focal aim and the means to meet it.
When working on your stats report, make sure your paper is crystal-clear when it comes to its goal and ways to achieve that goal. To help you with that, ask yourself before diving into writing:
- What data properties am I going to investigate?
- How many variable types will I study? Is it enough, or should I narrow them down or have more?
- Having researched the area, am I sure that these variables (besides, what are they?) suit the topic?
When you come up with answers, you will be able to build an introduction, including crucial information about what your report intends to accomplish and what methods it uses to attain the goal.
Gathering correct and pertinent data
Like any paper, a statistical report must contain reliable and authoritative data. It can originate from different web pages, journals, studies, measurements, corpora, experiments, surveys, etc.
Whatever the data you retrieve, remember to explain where you got it from and why it best pertains to your report. Also, don’t forget to point out general characteristics of the data, like objects, and explain which properties are the most critical to your project.
Adding figures
People comprehend and retain much more information if it’s visualized. Adding figures is essential in statistics, as it helps project numbers and makes them easier to understand and interpret. When possible–and relevant–include charts, graphs, tables, and other figures.
Interpreting the results
No matter what your report is about, it must explain the results. It is pivotal to interpret what the results mean because not everyone can quickly and easily understand them. Always keep in mind that your audience comprises knowledgeable people and those who aren’t familiar with the topic.
Making use of statistical tools
Since statistics allows people to analyze trends, tendencies, and behaviors, it is no wonder that the field has taken a giant step ahead. Numerous statistical tools are available these days, and they are way better than Excel. Indubitably, you can compose a good statistics report using the latter tool. But if you plan on working within the field of Statistics, you may want to learn how to use some of the following software:
- R
- SPSS
- Python
- MATLAB
- Stata
