Well I survived my week of quantitative methods and it was definitely tough. That said, I learned a great deal more about statistics and am excited to learn more, particularly about Structural Equation Modelling which is a strong possibility for my thesis. The course was difficult because I had a very steep learning curve in 3 key areas: conceptually, usage of notations, and new software. The software piece for me was not just SPSS and AMOS but also EXCEL because I rely primarily of WORD and PowerPoint at work. The other thing that makes stats hard is that different words are used for the same things, for example factors and constructs are essentially the same thing (I think!) or understanding that notation for samples and the population are different. It was critical to ask questions and I was really comfortable doing this as were my classmates.
The above notwithstanding, I regularly toggled between budding confidence and significant insecurity for the first 3 days of the workshop. I was very fortunate to receive support from my partner this week, who regularly reminded me that I don’t have to learn everything and also provided some quick EXCEL lessons which I was able to put to immediate usage. I also spent time in the evening redoing some of the group assignments to enhance my understanding of the software and also read the notes that our professor had created. Needless to say it was 6 days of very heavy lifting and I am thrilled to have survived! I have already sourced two Statistics Tutors and purchased SPSS For Dummies. My plan for the next few weeks is to work on my assignment and leverage the tutors to get deeper into the concepts and software.
After a quick work out at the gym last night I went out for dinner and drinks which was great fun. Interestingly I managed to think through 3 life situations that would benefit from quantitative analysis. For example, what is the probability that an actor (our example was Hugo Weaving who was in both Lord of the Rings and The Matrix) could be in two overlapping trilogies. I am definitely in the “once given a hammer everything looks like a nail” mode, but at least I know how to hold the hammer!!