The Problem

Understanding what is to be learned from an investigation is so important that it is surprising that it is rarely, if ever, treated in any introduction to statistics. In a cursory review, we could find no elementary statistics text that provided a structure to understand the problem. For example, the popular and well-regarded book by Moore and McCabe [40] makes no mention of the role of statistics in problem formulation.

Two notable exceptions are the paper by Hand [29] and Chatfield's book, [12]. Hand's aim was ``to stimulate debate about the need to formulate research questions sufficiently precisely that they may be unambiguously and correctly matched with statistical techniques''. He suggests five principles to aid in this matching but no structure or language. Chatfield provides excellent advice to get a clear understanding of the physical background to the situation under study, to clarify the objectives and to formulate the problem in statistical terms.

The purpose of the problem stage in statistical method is to provide a clear statement of what is to be learned. A well defined structure and clear terminology will help translate the contextual problem into a form that can guide the design and implementation of the subsequent stages.