Top Ten Confusing Stats Terms Explained in “Plain English” (#8: Residual)

When I hear the word "residual", the pulp left over after I drink my orange juice pops into my brain, or perhaps the film left on the car after a heavy rain. However, when my regression model spits out an estimate of my model's residual, I'm fairly confident it isn't referring to OJ or automobile gunk...right? Not so fast, that imagery is more similar to it's statistical meaning than you might initially think.

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Data Transformations: statistical voodoo or truth serum for your data?

Anyone that has taken a statistics class has probably learned about transforming data, at one time or another (although you may be in denial about it). In short, you may want to transform your data if you need to perform a parametric analysis, but the inherent assumptions are violated in your dataset.

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