I ran a bunch of experiments last week, and will continue to run them this week (if people actually sign up for them). Which means I’ve got more data to analyze. Which is always a good thing, never a bad thing, but often a frustrating thing.
Why? Because it once again means delving into statistics. And trying to find that elusive test that compares what I think it’s comparing. Seriously, we need better stats education (or, at least, I do)! The basics I’ve learned in courses do not cover real actual research problems all that well.
In fact, last week, my supervisor and I sat down and tried to turn the questions we wanted to answer into statistical tests. And it all made sense at the time (but we also ran out of time). Until I went to perform them myself. And things just stopped ‘adding’ up. And I realized our data is different then we were thinking about it. Which means back to the drawing board, and lots of time spent searching out various statistical tests and trying to understand what I’m reading.
I generally think I’m pretty math-literate. However, when presented with a page full of formula’s containing multiple greek symbols and very few words in English, I realize that I’m not at all math-stat-literate.
But I will prevail. So, I’ll start by arranging a meeting with my supervisor, and see if we can’t figure it out (or find someone who can help us). And, in the mean time, I’ll calculate the easy tests that I do know how to do on the data.
