Wednesday, January 13, 2010

Anything but that!

Wow, it's been a busy couple weeks and will continue to be. As I'm simultaneously writing my results draft and putting together my powerpoint for next week's talk*, I've come to the dismal tentative conclusion that I need to rework some of my statistics. These were the stats that I thought were finished and good to go. And yet, after being reminded of a different method this past weekend, I'm afraid it's more appropriate for my work. (In a nutshell, instead of testing F1 and F2 separately, as I did, testing the distance between them.) Right now I'm stalling and trying to think of reasons why I shouldn't have to do that. So far all I've got is that I won't have time to do it by next week, and if no one in the audience suggests it, maybe I can get away without it.

And yet... for all my wanting to hurry and get this done as quickly as possible, I just don't know if I can let myself get away with it. I don't want to sacrifice quality for speed. (Actually, I want to be okay with that, but I just can't.)

And while I'm complaining about statistics (as usual), do you mind if I whine that I'm still not sure about my other numbers? Even the professional statistician didn't actually answer my questions - he just suggested I present what I have and then try (yet another) test. I think this is actually a case where I will base my decisions on what the audience says. If they don't like what I did and suggest something else, I'll do it. If they can't think of a better way, I'll probably say forget it.

If I could go back to Undergraduate Me and give her one piece of advice, it would be to take as many statistics classes and psychology research methods classes as possible. (Actually, I'd probably talk to Undergraduate Me about a few other things as well, but those are unrelated to linguistics.)


* I've found giving presentations on your work as it's in progress to be a helpful way to get a handle on what you're doing. For example, in order to create my presentation, I need to write the conclusions for these sections (something I've put off doing). In figuring out what the most important things to say are, my presentation and my written draft inform each other.

1 comment:

  1. ooo-there's a topic. what would I say to undergraduate me?

    ReplyDelete