Statistical analysis of vertical accelerations of planing craft: Common pitfalls and how to avoid them

A careful review of the literature on the analysis of vertical accelerations of high-speed watercraft reveals that a number of statistical misconceptions are pervasive. These include: (1) ignoring vertical thresholding in analysis, (2) misunderstanding the relationships between the Exponential and other distributions, (3) failing to report uncertainty, and (4) failing to discuss alternative methods for estimation. This article brings these issues to the fore and shows how popular methods, when applied to simulated data, can give inaccurate results. We set forth proper methods for analysis and illustrate their use on a data set from a full-scale planing craft.