<p>[We often don't close these - but I increasingly tend to think we should put them on hold until clarified]</p>

<p>The title is:</p>

<h2>What test should I run?</h2>

<p>but which contain no indication of any question of interest whatever, instead focusing entirely on a description of the data (and that usually omitting important information), as if the form of the data were the only relevant factor in deciding what tests are suitable. [The use of the word "run" rather than some other verb often acts as a hint that the asker is using SPSS.]</p>

<p>I blame the way stats is often taught and especially the tendency to focus on following a recipe. In particular I think these questions tend to follow from --</p>

<ul>
<li><p>an uncritical focus on Stevens' typology (nominal/ordinal/interval/ratio) as if that were the only factor of relevance (or indeed the only way of categorizing variables).</p></li>
<li><p>prescribing some kinds of analysis and proscribing others with reference only to that typology rather than to the substantive questions of interest and to the properties of the inferential procedures considered. Many times an analysis that would be proscribed in this way (or simply not considered at all) turns out to be a perfectly sensible as a way addressing the questions of interest, while the prescribed analysis may sometimes be considerably less useful (or even misleading).</p></li>
<li><p>over-reliance on a "cheat sheet" or "summary table" or other recipe that lists an analysis to go with a form of data, which often blocks people from searching for anything better. </p></li>
</ul>

<p>These questions are also associated with a common tendency to think that parametric procedures are limited to normal-theory procedures and nonparametric procedures are what you use when you reject a test of normality; often there's some perceived issue with normality that prompts the question. </p>

<p>Besides, the publishing house <em>O$\hspace 0.2mm$RLY$\hspace{0.1mm} ^?$</em> has <a href="https://i.stack.imgur.com/8eHQh.png" rel="nofollow noreferrer">an entire volume dedicated to the subject</a>.</p>

<p><a href="https://i.stack.imgur.com/8eHQh.png" rel="nofollow noreferrer"><img src="https://i.stack.imgur.com/8eHQhm.png" alt="Image of the front cover of a book in the style of an O&#39;Reilly book, which has the title &quot;What Test Should I run?&quot; with subtitle &quot;A vaguely definitive guide&quot;. There&#39;s a large black and white drawing of a bat in a very old style. The author is Noah deCernibal-Hypothesis and there&#39;s a small line right at the top that says &quot;Asking the unanswerable question&quot;"></a></p>

<p>(click the link or the picture for a larger image)</p>
