Statistical Approaches and Decision Making Towards Bivariate and Multivariate Analyses with Visirule
Ismail O. Muraina *
School of Science, Adeniran Ogunsanya College of Education, Otto/Ijanikin, Nigeria.
Mukaila A. Rahman
Faculty of Science, Lagos State University, Nigeria.
Imran A. Adeleke
School of Science, Adeniran Ogunsanya College of Education, Otto/Ijanikin, Nigeria.
*Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Abstract
Without any doubt, research is sometimes designed to solve a particular problem. In social sciences and education, data collected during research studies are often subjected to statistical analysis for deducing desirable results. Reported research that involved data collection without proper analysis to back these results often makes the work non-robust enough for wider acceptance in the research community. One of the greatest challenges often faced by amateur researchers and students is how to select appropriate statistical tools which are suitable and relevant to the data at hand. Having a firm knowledge of suitable statistical tool goes a long way in motivating and enhancing researcher’s attitudes towards the work. This paper presents procedures necessary for researchers to select appropriate statistical instruments for a desired purpose. The Visirule software, being free software, was used as a decision enabling tool, presented graphically based on a logic programming model. In research, knowledge of bivariate and multivariate analyses would assist researchers – both undergraduate and postgraduate – to make viable decision before a particular statistical data analysis is being used.
Keywords: Statistics, visirule, bivariate, multivariate, decision support tool.