Your team is struggling to grasp statistical concepts. How can you make them see the value of thoroughness?

To help your team understand the importance of being thorough with statistics, create interesting, real life situations where decisions based on data lead to clear results. Use visual tools and interactive methods to make complex ideas easier to grasp, encouraging a culture of curiosity. Promote hands-on projects that show how careful analysis can reveal valuable insights, directly affecting their work. By presenting statistical concepts as strong tools for storytelling and problem solving, you can change their mindset, turning statistics from a challenging topic into a crucial skill. This method not only improves understanding but also gives your team the confidence to use data effectively, leading to better outcomes in their projects.

Before beginning complicated studies, it is imperative to embrace the fundamentals. Make sure everyone on your team is well-versed in basic statistical concepts like means, medians, and modes. These central tendency measurements serve as fundamental building blocks for increasingly complex statistical methods. Motivate your group to put these fundamentals into practice by providing examples from your industry's real-world. This practical method helps give real form to abstract ideas and demonstrates how basic statistics can yield insightful information. Your team will be more capable of handling more complex studies and deriving insightful conclusions from the data if they can grasp these fundamentals.

To explain this to a non-technical audience as a data science specialist, I would start by relating it to a real-world scenario. Namely, I would ask the team how often they use online reviews to decided whether to dine somewhere. Normally, one might read a few reviews, but usually people tend to rely on the overall 'star-rating' of the restaurant. Let's now explore measures of central tendency with regards to this example: The star-rating is the average of all reviews, giving us the mean. The mode is the star-rating that appears most often in the set of reviews. The median is the middle value of a set that is arranged in order. If the set has an even number of values, then the average of the two middle ones is taken as the median.

To help your team appreciate the value of thoroughness in understanding statistical concepts, start by demonstrating the practical applications of statistics in their day-to-day tasks or projects. Use concrete examples to highlight how data-driven decisions can lead to better outcomes, such as improved performance metrics or more effective strategies. Incorporate interactive learning methods, like workshops or case studies, to engage them in hands-on experiences that show the correlation between statistical rigour and successful results. Encourage open discussions to address their questions and concerns, fostering an environment where they feel comfortable exploring the subject.

The best way to show the impact of great visual aids to your team is by having them explain the relationship behind variables on a poorly structured plot. There are a plethora of examples of bad data representation/visualisation in news, media, but also academic papers. Once the team has managed to wrap their heads around the plot, you can drive home the message by showing them a clean and appropriate visual representation of the same data. This will highlight how effective visual representation can help clearly communicate trends and relationships at a first glance. Furthermore, depending on the business context, this might help the team better understand how to better communicate with clients and stakeholders through data visualisation.