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1135 andrew gelman stats-2012-01-22-Advice on do-it-yourself stats education?


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Introduction: Dustin Palmer writes: I am a recent graduate looking for a bit of advice. While I took intro classes on math and statistics in my undergraduate degree as a political science major, I find myself university-less and seeking to develop my statistics toolkit. I work for an NGO in the international development field. I think that a solid statistics foundation would offer me not only more career opportunities, but more importantly, a deeper and more nuanced understanding of the processes and problems that interest me. I’m talking about field experiments and practical quantitative and qualitative data analysis. I have plenty of free time, ambition, and enthusiasm to improve this part of my toolbox, but I lack an attachment to an institution and much in the way of financial resources. How would you go about making a concentrated effort at acquiring an understanding of the field and its actual application in something like R or Stata, which I admit to never having used? Perhaps I am


Summary: the most important sentenses genereted by tfidf model

sentIndex sentText sentNum sentScore

1 Dustin Palmer writes: I am a recent graduate looking for a bit of advice. [sent-1, score-0.099]

2 While I took intro classes on math and statistics in my undergraduate degree as a political science major, I find myself university-less and seeking to develop my statistics toolkit. [sent-2, score-0.992]

3 I work for an NGO in the international development field. [sent-3, score-0.193]

4 I think that a solid statistics foundation would offer me not only more career opportunities, but more importantly, a deeper and more nuanced understanding of the processes and problems that interest me. [sent-4, score-0.953]

5 I’m talking about field experiments and practical quantitative and qualitative data analysis. [sent-5, score-0.457]

6 I have plenty of free time, ambition, and enthusiasm to improve this part of my toolbox, but I lack an attachment to an institution and much in the way of financial resources. [sent-6, score-0.787]

7 How would you go about making a concentrated effort at acquiring an understanding of the field and its actual application in something like R or Stata, which I admit to never having used? [sent-7, score-0.8]

8 Perhaps I am simply asking about web resources or best texts, but any broad advice would be much appreciated too. [sent-8, score-0.541]

9 My gut recommendation is to start with a problem you care about and figure out what you need to get a reasonable solution, then go to the next problem, and so forth. [sent-9, score-0.418]

10 For books, you could start with The Statistical Sleuth and my book with Jennifer. [sent-10, score-0.125]

11 If you want to learn R, just try to make some pretty and useful graphs, that will motivate you to be able to do more. [sent-11, score-0.121]


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