7 Summarizing and Presenting Results `Quite so!' `You see, Lady Swaffham, if ever you want to commit a murder, the thing you've got to do is to prevent people from associatin' their ideas. Most people don't associate anythin' ± their ideas just roll about like so many dry peas on a tray, makin' a lot of noise an' goin' nowhere, but once you begin lettin' em string their peas into a necklace | 7 Summarizing and Presenting Results Quite so You see Lady Swaffham if ever you want to commit a murder the thing you ve got to do is to prevent people from associatin their ideas. Most people don t associate anythin -their ideas just roll about like so many dry peas on a tray makin a lot of noise an goin nowhere but once you begin lettin em string their peas into a necklace it s goin to be strong enough to hang you what Dear me said Mrs Tommy Frayle with a little scream what a blessing it is none of my friends have any ideas at all Y see said Lord Peter balancing a piece of duck on his fork and frowning it s only in Sherlock Holmes and stories like that that people think things out logically. Or nar ly if somebody tells you somethin out of the way you just say By Jove or How sad an leave it at that an half the time you forget about it nless somethin turns up afterwards to drive it home. Sayers 1989 118 Lord Peter Wimsey Whose Body Associatin ideas is what quantitative research is about. Good research design and good data analysis assist in the process of associating ideas and coming to a conclusion. But we are not ended there. Research also has to be presented to readers - to an audience. Those readers and that audience have to be able to understand your research. Often research is not only for the immediate experts in your field but for a broader public including policy makers and managers. If they cannot understand your work and make the associations that you expect then your good design and good analysis will be wasted. The theme of this book has been detection and reasoning about evidence. The different styles of reasoning about evidence in detective fiction - deduction induction abduction - have their counterpart in social science and in statistics. But detectives like Sherlock Holmes sometimes mistake their guesses for deductions. Holmes meta-bets - he constructs scenarios about real-world events that may or may not match up with those events. Detectives bet
