Perhaps the best way to illustrate the value of this course is to take its final lecture, by Richard Morey. In one fell swoop he demonstrates the inadequacy of the frequentist approach to statistical testing, and yet the core message of the course survives intact.
This core message is that the test is only the tool to extract what we really care about: knowledge. A well-crafted experiment teaches us about the world, about people, about the systems we build. By selecting the appropriate experimental designs and the right tests to judge our data by we tease out this knowledge.
Although the course itself was fairly heavy on specific tests for specific types of data, the big picture shines through: how can I get my data to tell me what the world is like? And although ultimately it seems like the focus was mostly on testing what data we already have, the process of getting that data is subject to this same concept. This all leads to a cycle of capturing what the world is like in data and distilling out of that data a continually more refined picture of the world: the empirical cycle.
reflectiesonderzoeksmethodologie 