Put aside your fears and be wrong already!
Jeremy Taylor | Sunday, May 2, 2010 at 12:59PM First of all, if your research progress is slowed by fear of statistics, your are certainly not alone. Being afraid to "mess-up" your stats, and thus your project, is a common lament. But I'm here to tell you that your project is not that fragile! Once your data is collected, entered, cleaned, and ready for analysis, it is time for excitement, not concern! The golden rule here is: BACK UP. I'll say it again: BACK UP. In case I haven't been clear so far BACK UP! By this I mean back up your data. Make double, triple, and quadruple copies of your dataset and KEEP THEM IN DIFFERENT PLACES (e.g. on a server, on an external hard drive, on a flash drive...etc). It doesn't do much good to keep back up copies in the same place as your original, because if something goes wrong where your data is located, the back up copies are likely toast too!
