(no subject)

[geminigirl]

I'm amazed at the response my occasional complaints about SPSS bring on. As much as I complain about it, I really do enjoy working with it. I like the process of getting the data in and making sure it's correct. I like looking at it and saying "Hey, there's the answer," or "Look at that, there's a correlation between drinking and gender identity," or "Oh wow, that's kind of an odd trend...I wonder if it's how the question was worded, or a cultural understanding or what?" I like those parts. I like knowing how the data fits together, answering the questions, figuring out what the answers really mean. I could never really be a statistician, but I love that I understand some of it. (I was so thrilled the first time I read a journal article and read the analysis and realized that I understood it...the numbers, the technical vocabulary of the field, all of that.) It's the quest to find answers like that, to fit the pieces together, to try and make sense of the disconsonant things that make me want to do research. It's a burning desire to know more.

Comments

[mac-arthur-park.livejournal.com]

And see, SPSS just makes me twitch.

However, I am deeply impressed by those who use it and even *gasp* enjoy it.

[geminigirl]

I don't so much enjoy the SPSS part. I like the answers.

SPSS makes me want to hurt things.

[whobunkyboo.livejournal.com]

I was so math phobic at one point in my life that I had a full-blown panic attack (as in run upstairs to take a Xanax, I will never pass this required course, full-blown panic attack) on the first day of my graduate stats course.

Of course, I got an A- (which my graduate faculty seems to love)so it was a waste of some perfectly good fear sweat. I agree with you about the answers part. The frustrating thing for me was not being able to figure out how to export all those lovely tasty graphs to my Word document for my program evaluation project.