HumANomaly

Our goal in research is to study and make summary statements about the entire distribution of data associated with our sample, but we do so by making measurements on the individual members of the sample in order to get those individual points of data. Even though our goal is to study the sample we never directly observe the sample; instead we observe the individual members of the sample. The challenge for the statistician/researcher is to recognize that his study of the sample is accomplished by studying the parts of the sample, and that when he studied the individual parts he was only studying the sample, not the individual parts. Synthesis can only be accomplished through analysis but the danger lies in believing that the analysis is the synthesis.