Clarification – Data Snooping and Tukey’s EDA

[ckimbrough]

In John Tukey’s book “EDA” (Exploratory Data Analysis) we learn to use descriptive visual devices such as “stem and leaf” plots, box plots, smoothing sequences, etc.

These things require a lot of rooting around in the data set, is EDA data snooping? Or is it only data snooping if you let what EDA reveals about the data guide you to a specific hypothesis?

[yaser]

Originally Posted by ckimbrough

Or is it only data snooping if you let what EDA reveals about the data guide you to a specific hypothesis?

This is the essence of data snooping; affecting the choice of hypothesis without accounting for that in terms of expected generalization.

[ckimbrough]

Thank you Professor, I needed to relate it to something I know. Snooping will be difficult to realize you are doing, but I will always keep it in mind.

Thank you for all your efforts in this excellent and thoughtful course. I believe I am on my way now!