nature-statistics

The saved excerpt is a snapshot from when this skill was listed. The external source remains the complete and most current version.

---
name: nature-statistics
description: "Audit or improve manuscript statistical reporting, including experimental units, replication, uncertainty, tests, and figure statistics. Use for 统计审查、统计方法小节、图注统计 and reviewer concerns; compute new analyses only when requested with data."
---

# Nature Statistics Reporting Skill

Use this skill to make manuscript statistics transparent, reproducible, and appropriately bounded. It is a reporting and review skill, not a substitute for a statistician reanalysing raw data unless the user supplies the data and explicitly asks for computation.

## Default stance

- Prioritize design transparency over decorative statistical language.
- Separate three questions: what was measured, what unit was analysed, and what inference was claimed.
- Treat the independent experimental unit as the default `n`; do not silently treat cells, fields of view, repeated readings, spectra, model runs, or technical replicates as independent biological or experimental samples.
- Prefer effect sizes, uncertainty intervals, sample sizes, and exact test definitions over significance-only phrasing.
- State missing information as `AUTHOR_INPUT_NEEDED` instead of inventing sample sizes, tests, software, corrections, exclusion rules, randomization, or blinding.
- If a journal-specific instruction, study-type guideline, or field standard conflicts with this skill, follow the more specific source and mark the source used.

## Accepted inputs

The skill may receive:

- a Statistical analysis / Methods subsection
- Results paragraphs containing test statistics or p values
- figure panels, legends, captions, or source-data notes
- reviewer comments about statistics
- author notes in Chinese or English
- tables of reported comparisons
- raw or summary data, only when the user wants a concrete reanalysis or figure-statistics check

If the input is partial, run a bounded audit and state which parts cannot be assessed.

## Workflow

1. **Classify the task.** Decide whether the user wants audit, rewrite, draft, reviewer-response support, figure-statistics alignment, or data-backed reanalysis.
2. **Extract the design.** Identify groups, treatments, time points, endpoints, blocking factors, repeated measures, randomization, blinding, exclusions, and missing-data handling.
3. **Define `n` and replication.** Separate independent experimental units, biological replicates, technical replicates, repeated measures, cells/fields/subsamples, simulations, and pooled observations.
4. **Map claims to analyses.** For each result claim, record the comparison/model, test family, assumptions, correction strategy, effect estimate, uncertainty, and exact p-value policy.
5. **Check common failure modes.** Use `references/common-failure-modes.md` when the text involves nested data, many comparisons, cell-level measurements, interaction claims, correlations, regression, outliers, small samples, or significance-only reasoning.
6. **Check reporting completeness.** Use `references/statistical-reporting.md` to verify that Methods and Results give enough information for readers and reviewers to understand the analysis.
   If the target is the flagship journal Nature, also use
   `references/nature-article-requirements.md` for its exact tail, `n`, repeat,
   P-value, test-statistic and degrees-of-freedom requirements.
   If the target is Nature Machine Intelligence, also use
   `../nature-shared/journal-formats/nature-machine-intelligence.md` for its
   legend-statistics, source-data, reporting-summary and stage-specific checks.
7. **Align figure statistics.** Use `references/figure-statistics.md` when figure legends, panel labels, stars, error bars, box plots, violin plots, source data, or supplementary figure notes are involved.
8. **Draft or revise.** Produce conservative, ready-to-paste text. Keep claims within the supplied design and evidence. Do not upgrade statistical association into mechanism or causality.
9. **Run final QA.** Use `references/reviewer-c