Some ideas on good report
What is a good data analysis presentation
Three types of reserach questions
- Patterns of association – focus on pattern discovery
- Causal question – identify the effect of an intervention
- Experiment
- Observational data
- Build a predictive model – focus on selection, understand how model works
Let us focus on association
Think questions like
- Are people working more hours, make more money/hour?
- How much less does a car worth when having 1000km more in odometer?
- What is the relationship between hotel prices and location / amenities?
Causal would be
- In an intervention, we make some people work more, will they have a high w/h?
Prediction would be
- Here is wage data, let us build a model for hourly wage
What to include in a report
Consider a few-page report on an association with some possibility for causal analysis (later)
Key parts of the report
- Introduction (why interesting)
- Research question
- Data description
- source
- variables
- Methods
- what method you use (e.g. cross section OLS)
- regression you estimate precisely
- Results
- Include exhibits (think about graphs, tables)
- Decide on main result and focus on explaining it (e.g. \(x\) coefficient)
- Hint: think for the reader – what would help them understand?
- Conclusion
- Short: 1-2 para
- Discussion to summarize result (in plain English)
- Place result in context
- is it causal
- external validity
- (no need for future research)