The first question that I ask an environmental science student who comes seeking my advice on a data analysis problem is Have you looked at your data? Very often, after some beating around the bush, the student answers, Not really. The student goes on to explain that he or she loaded the data into an analysis package provided by an advisor, or downloaded off the web, and it didn’t work. The student tells me, Something is wrong with my data! I then ask my second question: Have you ever used the analysis package with a dataset that did work? After some further beating around the bush,.
