Finishing an analysis

What does it mean to finish an analysis?  There are perhaps three different times when you finish an analysis and I have had them all this last fortnight

When you stop analysing: This is really the last one to happen this week, but it is when you draw a line under then analysis and say I am not going to explore anything more no matter how interesting it appear. I had this with someone where I just have to do the confirmatory factor analysis for them and write it up, that will be the last stage of an analysis that has covered everything from simple descriptives, principle components analysis, correlation and so on. I am not writing this up for which I am truly grateful as it is a massive sprawling analysis and I am not sure it tells us anything particularly new.

When you write the report: this is different, in some sense I got to the previous stage before, all I am doing was repeating it, making sure I dotted the "i"s and crossed the "t"s. I know the story the data tells now all I am doing is thinking how to present it so that other people can incorporate an analysis I have done into their work. Almost essential for writing publications. This I do only when I am analysing the data for someone. I had this with a dataset I got about four months ago and it just needed me to do things with a clear head.

When you do the bits after a journal review: When you make the alterations to a paper after a review. The report was written months ago, the academic (in this case a prof) has written it up and submitted it to a journal. The journal has got back with reviewers comments and some of those involve the stats. Normally at the point at which they decided to present the basic data because you had not included the nice tidy table that they wanted and rather than trouble you they go and do it themselves. This means that you have to sit down and produce the results as they came from the analysis. If you are organised you have all the analysis neatly put together in a folder. Unfortunately all I could find was the output and not the exact output so had to recreate it. This is always risky as there are so many nuances around an analysis.

So which is the end? I hope the first but often it is the several times through the third before you can put the data away safely.

Anyway I also started one analysis this week, and I am quite sure there will be more along shortly