Preface

This document grew out of a Special Interest Group and Workshop to develop guidelines for transparent statistical communication in Human-Computer Interaction research. The recommendations in this guideline are chosen to encourage transparency in the practice of statistics. For more details on this position, see our guiding principles.

Organization

This document is organized according to statistical topics. Each chapter splits into two sections: FAQ and Exemplars. The FAQ section lists questions that are relevant to transparency practice. We strive to allow random-access, to allow each reader to quickly find a compact answers to specific questions he/she has in mind. Thus, this guideline assumes some knowledge about the topic. We summarize such knowledge in earlier questions, but this is by no means exhaustive. Whenever you found yourself disoriented, it might be helpful to skim one or two earlier questions or lookup definitions of statistical terms over the internet. Whenever appropriate, we also point to other questions and parts of exemplars that are relevant.

The Exemplars section supplements the FAQ by showing concrete cases in code and their interpretation(s). In contrast to the FAQ, the exemplars should be read top-to-bottom: the earlier examples are building blocks of the latter.

Using

The text in this guideline is under CC-BY license, and the code is under MIT license. These license choices mean that you can use any code from this guideline in your analysis and can release your code (even under other licenses).

Limitations

We focus on addressing issues that are commonly misunderstood and suboptimally practiced—intentionally or unintentionally. Therefore, the scope and focus of this document is far narrower than being a complete textbook in statistics.

Versions

As the consensus in statistical practice evolves (as science evolves), this document is a living document. For the most up-to-date version of the guideline, visit the online guideline page or source on Github.

Citing

You can cite this guideline with the following ACM reference format. If you wish to cite a specific version, replace the DOI with the version-specific DOI and the date of publication as stated at the top of this webpage.

Transparent Statistics in Human–Computer Interaction working group. 2019. Transparent Statistics Guidelines. (Jun 2019). DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.1186169 (Available at https://transparentstats.github.io/guidelines)

Here’s the same thing in BibTeX format

@misc{TransparentStatsJun2019, 
    title={{Transparent} {Statistics} {Guidelines}}, 
    author={{Transparent} {Statistics} in {Human}–{Computer} {Interaction} {Working} {Group}}, 
    DOI = {10.5281/zenodo.1186169},
    month={Jun},
    year={2019},
    note={({Available} at https://transparentstats.github.io/guidelines)}
}

Contributing

We welcome help and feedback at all levels! If you would like to contribute, please see Contributing to the Guidelines. Especially, please have a look at the Style Guide and a contributor Code of Conduct.