A Refresher on Regression Analysis

That’s all. And not a bad refresher at that, by Amy Gallo in Harvard Business Review:

“You have to go out and see what’s happening in the real world. What’s the physical mechanism that’s causing the relationship? … A lot of people skip this step and I think it’s because they’re lazy. The goal is not to figure out what is going on in the data but to figure out is what is going on in the world. You have to go out and pound the pavement,” Redman says.

…

“And if you see something that doesn’t make sense ask whether the data was right or whether there is indeed a large error term…. And, he says, never forget to look beyond the numbers to what’s happening outside your office: “You need to pair any analysis with study of real world. The best scientists — and managers — look at both.”