[Heartlogic-dev] RE: [R] remedial stats education

[Charles Annis, P.E.]

Given that your goal is understanding the fundamentals (a wise choice as it
is problematic attempting to build on an inadequate foundation, and
dangerous to use tools that you don't understand), I enthusiastically
recommend Peter Dalgaard's book, _Introductory Statistics with R_. Springer,
2002. ISBN 0-387-95475-9. http://www.biostat.ku.dk/~pd/ISwR.html.  It is
inexpensive, well written, lucid and very helpful.  After you've mastered
that (and since this is remedial work for you it will not take very long) I
further recommend Venables and Ripley, _Modern Applied Statistics with S_,
Fourth Edition. Springer, 2002. ISBN 0-387-95457-0.
http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/pub/MASS4/.  This book is more demanding and
covers a broad spectrum of contemporary statistical practice.


Charles Annis, P.E.

address@hidden
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http://www.StatisticalEngineering.com
 

-----Original Message-----
From: address@hidden
[mailto:address@hidden On Behalf Of Doran, Harold
Sent: Monday, September 12, 2005 8:27 AM
To: Joshua N Pritikin; address@hidden
Cc: address@hidden
Subject: Re: [R] remedial stats education

There is a Springer publication "All of Statistics: a concise course in
statistical inference" by Larry Wasserman that might be what you are
looking for. The book also has an emphasis on R and his web site has
code and data sets for analysis of the examples used throughout.

-Harold
 

-----Original Message-----
From: address@hidden
[mailto:address@hidden On Behalf Of Joshua N Pritikin
Sent: Monday, September 12, 2005 8:16 AM
To: address@hidden
Cc: address@hidden
Subject: [R] remedial stats education

In short:

I didn't take enough stats courses in college.  Now I am working on
scientific research and I feel somewhat lost when it comes to designing
the statistical framework.  I have looked through the books at:

  http://www.r-project.org/doc/bib/R-books.html

I even tried to read [17] Julian J. Faraway. Linear Models with R.  This
book is too advanced.  It helped a little bit but I still feel lost.
Can somebody recommend a textbook or textbooks suitable for a self-study
stats course?

Brief bio:

I have 20 years background in software development.  I know lots of
computer languages including C++ and Perl.  The computer language
aspects of R seems fairly simple.  I did some calculus in college but
not more than 1-2 courses.  I have a basic understanding of probability.
I mostly understand descriptive statistics.  I feel somewhat lost when
it comes to statistical inference.  I am good at self-study.  I happily
spend 12 hours a day reading dry technical manuals.

About the research:

I have designed a web-based questionaire.
http://shared.openheartlogic.org My collaborator (equally stats inept)
is working on a similar web-based questionaire
http://ruminate.openheartlogic.org

Ultimately, we want to publish in a peer-reviewed journal such as
Emotion & Cognition or, at least, get a paper accepted at the annual
Cognitive Science conference.  Something like that.  We have already
started collecting data but not on a large scale since we are not
confident about our statistical approach.

This is a shot in the dark, but if a stats expert wants to collaborate
with us then we would welcome that. We don't have much to offer except,
what we think is, exciting research.

In any case, a few textbook recommendations would probably help me a
lot.

--
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