I try not to bore you all too much with grad school woes, but today I can't help myself. I am thisclose to paying someone to just do all the statistics for my research for me.
I got to this point a few weeks ago, but my husband the scientist was not fond of the idea. I knew he was right. After all, it's supposed to be hard to get your Ph.D., and being able to analyze your own data is something you really should be able to do. And I've taken one undergraduate course on statistics in the past five years, which is just enough to think you know what you're doing.
So I settled in and actually figured out the right tests to run. I was thrilled! I even managed to find some significant results to show when I visited my committee last week!
They promptly informed me that I was not using the right test. This was not a complete surprise. Then they had to think really hard about what tests to run. That was a comfort - at least it wasn't completely obvious, and they're the professionals! They gave me an outline of what to do, I checked out four library books on using SPSS (social sciences stats software), and came home to get to work.
Turns out, none of those books includes instructions on the more advanced test I needed. Yesterday I fired off an order to Amazon.com in the hopes of another book that will save me. In the meantime, I turned to the easier test I need to run.
And can't figure it out. I think it's the wrong test, because my data would violate it's assumptions. So I turned to my handy-dandy textbook from that one class. I love it because this is on the back inside cover:
Do you know what that is? It's four handy-dandy charts that can help you determine which test to use. My favorite part of the whole book.
So I went to the correct chart and started following the handy-dandy arrows...
See how all the tests are nicely lined up along the right side? So helpful!
Guess which one my arrows pointed to?
You've got it. NONE.
Please excuse me while I bang my head against the desk and bemoan my mathematical ignorance and swear that our children will be taking every math class ever available to them. Because when it comes down to it, even English majors need math.