Plan a statistic worth citing
Use when you want a number of your own that assistants can attribute to you.
Fill in before running
Replace each placeholder with your own detail. The more specific you are, the less the model invents.
- {{DATA_WE_HOLD}}
- {{AUDIENCE_QUESTIONS}}
- {{TOPIC}}
- {{PUBLISHING_LIMITS}}
Getting a better result
- A figure published without its sample gets quoted once and challenged forever after.
- Pick numbers only your data could produce, since those are the ones with nowhere else to attribute.
- Repeat the same method annually; the year on year comparison becomes worth more than the first figure.
Questions about this prompt
When is planning a statistic the right move?
When you want something cited that a competitor cannot copy from the same public source. It plans the study rather than reporting it, so run it before anyone queries the database. If the number already exists in a public dataset, the citation goes to that dataset and this is the wrong prompt.
What do I need before running it?
An honest description of the data you hold, with row counts and a date range, the questions your audience asks, and the privacy, contractual and commercial limits on publishing. Row counts drive the sample adequacy verdict, so a vague claim that you have lots of data returns cannot tell throughout.
What comes back, and which column is worth the most?
Up to ten candidate figures ranked by likelihood of being quoted, a table covering sample adequacy, the first confound a critic would raise and the method note required, then sentence templates with the number left blank. The confound column is the useful bit, since that is the objection arriving after publication.
What is the mistake that costs me?
Filling in a template blank with an estimate to see how the sentence reads. Every number position is left empty on purpose, and an illustrative figure has a way of surviving into the published version. Publish the sample and period alongside the number, or it gets quoted once and challenged thereafter.