Statistics are hard to understand sometimes, and we can get them wrong. Acknowledging and correcting mistakes in our writing is important.

I screwed the pooch a couple of weeks ago, not in an article I wrote, but in tweet and Facebook post that I used to promote the article. I simply didn’t wrap my mind correctly around the statistics and I ended up drawing a very incorrect conclusion.

I felt it was important to correct that as soon as I did understand, so as not to muddy the waters or have people think I was OK with using incorrect information.

I’ve heard it said that statistics are the most unintuitive branch of mathematics. Certainly for me, doing statistics well is harder than doing even calculus. So I guess the best we can do is the best we can, and then be very upfront and transparent when we make a mistake.