(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.