The ticket collectors at the station turnstiles have given up collecting tickets, and all traffic is diverted as people flood into the city centre to see the festivities begin.
Little pustules of policeman (well you think of a better collective noun) mill around discussing their day to day jobs.
Apparently opening the Sydney Festival is a step up from your routine traffic control, causing me a moment's reflection on the meaning of life - or the lack of one.
One policeman directs me to the Mint - have you ever noticed that by the time you get totally fed up and ask for directions you are usually standing directly in front of the place/item frustrating you? - as my wonderful Czech flatmate Pavla walks out onto the Mint balcony. Ting!
Me: Pavliiiiiiiinka. Paaaaaavla. Pavliiiiiiiiiiiiiinka. [Collect looks from a bevy of grandmothers lined up at the fence]
Grandmother I: Oh no, you keep yelling. We're here to see people too.
But further screams only produce a cheery wave from a band member, the fat bastard in an orange T-shirt blocking my view of Pavlinka, who is doing her thing with a tambourine behind him.
I give up and video-tape.
And yes, you'd be right. My camera-wielding ability sucks. This doesn't worry me so much. But my sucky (this glorious adjective comes courtesy of Christine Moreton who used it so effectively to describe my life a few months ago) mathematical ability is driving me nuts.
Why? Because I am so bored I have actually decided that I need to get off my arse and publish some of my PhD findings.
And what does maths have to do with this? Statistical bloody analysis is what.
The publication advice for the journal I am targeting advises that:
The reporting of effect sizes is essential to good research... Submitting authors... are therefore required to provide a measure of effect size...
I check my PhD. It reads:
This effect was highly statistically significant for every performance indicator whether it related to the learners’ perceived ability to communicate, their sincerity, their affective or contextual appropriateness or their ability to command empathy; t(80) = 1.990, p<.01, two-tailed.
Oh goody, I think. There is the effect.
Oh sucky, I think, a moment later. I have no idea what it means.
With Christine M, the elegant inventor of adjectives in less sucky times.
Well, yes, I did do my own statistical analysis, a hellish process which involved pouring over Statistics for Dummies (aka Gravetter & Wallnau's trillionth edition of Statistics for the Behavioral Sciences), working out the statistical equation I needed, then doing all the calculations manually till I could check them against the Excel formula.
It also involved raging tantrums, much screaming at inanimate objects, tearing of hair, renting of clothes and the hurling of notebooks across my study until the Sri Lankan lady who lived next door took to ducking back into her house when she saw me emerge on the evidential basis that I was a madwoman.
Ah yes. The joys of mathematics.
And there were joys. I remember my excitement at the size of the effect! Oh my god! (p<.01)! My exhilaration that it was two-tailed rather than one-tailed! Oh my god! That is so! statistically! significant!
And then of course one finishes one's PhD and is forced to get a life.
So here I am again. With so little life that I am back at the library with my tactfully named manual. (Do you know, that while no actual Statistics for Dummies exists, there is one called Statistics for Behavioural Scientists. How rude.)
If I can do it once, I am telling myself, I can do it again.
Maybe.
Grandmother II: That's my grandson standing right next to that pole.
Yeah, her data analysis sucks. Many poles. Many grandsons.
Best wishes for all your life-enhancing activities in 2010. May they be many and varied. And not statistically analysed.
Much love,
Simone the Life-Less
Comments
Post a Comment