On Tue, 21 Jan 2003, PALMER Mark wrote:
> ....as I tried to point out before the research question should drive
> the scope of your enquiries. Some folk start with research questions so
> broad as to be useless.
Without pushing the point, I should like to comment that there is a danger
here of being too reductionist. "Far better an approximate answer to the
right question, which is often vague, than an exact answer to the wrong
question, which can always be made precise." John Tukey, Annals of
Mathematical Statistics, 33 (1962). [I suspect Tukey was quoting an older
source.]
It seems to me a common confusion, especially among politicians, that
research leads to fixed answers; true research is exploration, so we may
become more sure of the ground newly covered but the horizon is just as
distant and hazy. Most statistical tests, as described in textbooks, were
developed for quality control not investigation.
R. Allan Reese Email: [log in to unmask]
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