Getting started with data analysis can be so easy. We just plug numbers into a function or library and retrieve the results. But sometimes, it's easy to forget that we have to pay attention to how the data and experiments are constructed and how the questions are framed. Much of the reliability of statistics comes from following good practices and developed processes for framing and executing the tests and experiments.

Of course, there's a lot to setting up statistical experiments and following best practices in gathering data and applying statistical tests. We won't be able to do more than cursorily glance at this topic. Hopefully, either it will serve as a reminder of things you already know or it will outline what you need to know and point you in the right direction to learn more.

Over the course of this chapter, we'll move back and forth between looking at the problem we're tackling and seeing what null hypothesis testing is, how...