Heidi's presentation on Tuesday was very helpful. I especially liked how she covered the assumptions of ANOVA. I also thought that having Thursday's lab also be about ANOVA was well-planned. Though I think that I am getting a good grasp of this test, I think that it is pretty important for us ecology people to truly understand this well. I think that actually doing an ANOVA by hand with a real data set would help to make it more concrete in our minds. Back in ecology lab, this old-fashioned "work out the problem" method helped me to understand t-tests and chi-square tests. I know that it is old school but sometimes using computers does not equal understanding. Anyone of the same opinion?
:)
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Call me old school too, I absolutely agree with you. For me, actually working through the statistics by hand really helps me understand the mechanics of how it all works, otherwise there is too much mystery associated with all those values that computers spit out when you conduct the tests.
ReplyDeleteI agree - the first time I learn a new analytical technique, I like to do it by hand so I can understand what's going on. Otherwise it's all black box, right? I ran an ANOVA for the first time last summer and cranked it all out by hand - and I really thought it was worth it, even though it took me longer.
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