8.6 Next steps

Now that you hold real power in your hands to do data analysis, we need to to have our first talk about due diligence and assumptions of the statistical models that we use.

There are three fundamental assumptions that we either need to validate or address through experimental design in this class of models.

1. Independence of observations.
2. Normality of residuals (with mean = 0)
3. Homogeneity of variances

We will discuss what each of these means and how to assess them in Chapter 9. During remaining Chapters, we will continue to discuss methods for verifying or relaxing these assumptions to meet our needs through specific techniques.