The Statistical Bridge: From Events to Spines, Data Work, and the Interpretation of Results
Huayin Wang · Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research) · 2026
A business asks for average revenue per active customer this quarter, with a standard error. Every arithmetic step can be correct while the analysis has not established what one customer-quarter point is, which such points belong to the target, whether no recorded transaction means zero or incomplete coverage, what supplies probability, or what claim the reported interval licenses. The difficulty is not inside the formula. It lies in the passage by which operational data become the objects of statistical theory and by which formal results become claims about the world. This passage is the statistical bridge. This paper distinguishes two scopes of that bridge. Broadly, the statistical bridge is the governed interface between realized empirical evidence and the formal target world of statistical reasoning: data work establishes the governed analytical objects supplied to theory, and interpretation connects formal results to practical or scientific claims. At its structural center is a regime-qualified event-spine relation, E(r)⇄S(r), between recorded event-side evidence and independently established spine-side targets. Version 2.0 reconciles the framework with The Theory of Data, Version 6.0. Event and spine are treated as recurring existence forms of universes grounded in explicit existence laws; anchors are governed partitions of universes; analytical quantities are expressed through measure families and anchored measures F@A; and sufficient state is distinguished from statistical sufficiency and predictive state. The revision also clarifies that lawful reducers operate within a universe's anchor geometry, whereas the event-spine crossing itself is a governed cross-universe attribution, construction, or evidential relation. Not every event-to-spine passage is statistical inference: under complete coverage and a deterministic construction contract, event-side evidence may establish a spine-side measure without estimating an unknown quantity. The paper develops the bridge through data, generation, inference, and interpretation; analyzes five recurrent bridge failures; and gives a running customer-revenue case. It does not replace sampling theory, missing-data theory, point-process theory, regression, causal inference, or domain expertise. It provides a common data foundation through which their local bridges can be built, reviewed, and interpreted.