SPSS Statistics for Data Analysis and Visualization

Part I Advanced Statistics

The theme of Part I is advanced statistical techniques. How advanced? Obviously, this is a matter of perspective and is highly individual, but we’ve collected four techniques that we feel deserve detailed attention. We are not seeking out obscure techniques. Quite the opposite. We have selected techniques that we think deserve attention because they apply in myriad situations, yet, somehow, they have not found as wide an audience as they deserve. For instance, who among us does not routinely fail to meet statistical assumptions, particularly distributional assumptions? It happens so often that the temptation among some seems to be not to worry about it. In my experience (Keith), this doesn’t truly take the form of stopping to worry about assumptions. Rather, we grow tired of explaining technical assumptions checking to our colleagues. We surreptitiously check them, but fear that if we use a technique that is perceived as advanced that our audience won’t be ready for it.

This part of the book can be seen as an alternate way forward. We truly believe that if a more appropriate technique, instead of the standard technique when assumptions have not been met, is used it actually makes the narrative that we tell about our data easier to analyze, easier to write up, and easier for our colleagues to understand. Chapters 2 and 3, in particular, pick up on this theme, although it is an important theme of the entire book. Bootstrapping, discussed in Chapter ...