Getting ready to take Stats online. Session at Roundtable 2007.

• Be careful about rounding. Only one rounding at the very end.
• Review your linear algebra.
• Buy the books and software ahead of time so that you are ready to start when the class starts end of August.
• If at all possible, use existing data from work for your project. This will make it easier to finish the project and will make it more meaningful.
• Get the Graduate version of SPSS if you think you might be using more advanced stats in your dissertation. But if you will be waiting longer than 4 years to do your dissertation you’ll be in trouble because the license for the graduate version runs out in four years.
• Don’t extensively copy and paste SPSS output into your assignment. Then embed it in your answers. (This is the beginnings of how to write for our dissertations.) We will have to write narratively about the data in our assignments. You might have a table with some data. How will you write up the data? Every assignment has this “interpretation” piece of it. You don’t write about every little piece of information in the table. You pull out what you want your readers to be know from the table.
• If we have existing data, he will want to know our research question and what variables we have.
  

What will the class cover?

• Descriptive statistics. Describing variables.
• Inferential statistics. Logic of hypothesis testing etc.

There are three kinds of variables: categorical discrete, categorical ordinal (with order/ranking), and continuous (temperature, test scores, IQ, etc.). If your variables are continuous you have more powerful ways to analyze the data. Ask yourself what kind of data it is before you analyze the data.

Your assignments will never involve more than 2 variables in one analysis.

Resource: Courtney Pindling’s page. Classroom lectures have notes & Camtasia streaming etc.

Looking forward to learning how to analyze data I’ve collected at work!