I have to say after reading over the syllabus the first couple days of class I really did not think I was going to like this class. For starters, I remember thinking why is VMI requiring International Studies students to take a computer technical analysis class? Then when we got to class and Colonel Sanborn showed us SPSS Statistics and told us this was the program we are going to working with this semester; I was highly discouraged. SPSS Statistics looked like a fancy Excel and the thought of doing statistics again was highly unappealing. Turns out that SPSS statistics was a very easy program to work with and it made statistics entertaining and applicable to life.

Because at first I was not confident using SPSS statistics and I thought it was going to be very complicated, for the very first chapter I not only read the Pollock book, but I watched the videos that they post on the website. I think trying to watch the videos while going through the chapter was actually more challenging because I was not moving at the same speed as the video since I was reading as I went through the chapter. The first time the training wheels came off was in chapter 2 when I completed the interactive reading without the video. The information was a little bit more complicated then the information in the first chapter, but in general with all the diagrams and step-by-step instructions it was super easy. I remember I was presently surprised when I was able to complete the worksheet without going back through the chapter and looking at how to do each problem. This was a big deal for me because I have a poor memory when it comes to remembering how to do technological things. It was at this moment I knew I was actually going to learn how to work with statistics this semester.

One thing that was very frustrating or annoying this semester was the glitches in either SPSS or my computer. When I was doing the Chapter on transforming data my SPSS statistics shut down and none of the work that I had done saved. Unfortunately for me, the work done in this chapter actually needed to be saved so that it could be used in the future, which meant that I had to start all the way back from the beginning. Another technological issue was on a couple of the worksheets on Canvas, Canvas had a problem with the format of the worksheets and it was not functioning properly. This was pretty annoying because it did not let me enter in values to the charts, which was some lost points. Luckily, SPSS statistics only randomly shut down a couple times throughout this semester, but this was the only chapter that I had to go back to the beginning and restart from the beginning, so it was a small annoying thing in the grand scheme of things.

SPSS statistics became pretty interesting during Chapter 4 of Pollock when we started comparing data. It was during this chapter that I realized how applicable statistics can be for figuring things out in life. It can help answer even the smallest of questions. Manipulating and interpreting data definitely takes more thought and was more time consuming, but the results from studies are for more interesting then just playing with numbers. I realized when you put the P-value and T-test into context it is far easier to remember their significance and when/how to use them.

One of the greatest challenges in this class was when the training wheels truly came off and throughout the worksheets you had to determine which kind of tests to use to analyze the data. The book would drop hints like this is the independent variable and this is the dependent variable, but it did not tell you where to put them when you were trying to run an analysis, so that was another element you had to figure out. This was like the final step before being able to create my own tests and run analysis to test my own hypothesis or theory. Finishing Pollock and all of the chapters in the book was a good feeling because I had gained so much knowledge about statistics. I felt pretty confidant going into our group projects that I would be able to handle our data.

Analyzing the data for our group project went very well. Our group had 170 data sets to work with so we had a pretty large data set, but I think as a group we transformed the data pretty quickly and figured out how to manipulate it fairly easily. It was very helpful that COL Sanborn helped us to start the process of analyzing and pointed us in the right direction for our data analysis. After we met with him, running all the tests for the analysis we wanted was pretty easy and it was very interesting. Now I know in the future, if I ever have a project that involves data and statistics I will know exactly what to do and I won’t be nervous. I have to say I was very skeptical of this class, but this probably one of the more useful and applicable classes I have taken in college.

170 data entries. I was pleasantly surprised how many responses to our survey we got. To be perfectly honest I was expecting like 30 people  to respond to the survey, but we hit that number out of the ball park. It was kind of cool because I had a couple of people come up to me and let me know that they took my survey because they thought what our group was trying to analyze was interesting.

So the first step was collecting all the data, which was a lot easier then expected, it only took two days to collect the data. After we got all that data it hit me that we now were going to translate 170 data points to values we can actually work with and then actually work with them to analyze the data. The nice thing is that we figured out is that google forms puts all the data into a google spreadsheet for you, and then we could all work on the google spreadsheet document together. From there we were able to copy and past the  spreadsheet into Excel, which we then could open up in SPSS statistics. It was quite a process trying to figure out how we can all work on the data so not only person is translating all the data.

I have to say that working with the data and using SPSS statistics was a lot easier than I had imagined. Also, it was pretty cool that for  the most part I remembered how do manipulate the data like we did in class. For our project we compared the means and used an independent sample T-test in order to compare the different classes and  try and find statistical significance between the different means. Never in a million years did I think I would  be creating my own study, using statistic to manipulate data and try and find a correlation between two subjects. All in all, our project is going well and is pretty entertaining to look at.

Our  group started the data collection phase today, which involved sending the e-mail out to the corp. Unfortunately, we made mistakes when we sent the link out. So not only did I not set the survey settings so that people have to request access to do the survey, but we also sent out a link to a weird format of the survey. It is frustrating because we lost participants due to the error. Also, we sent the link to the S2 captain to be sent out again, but it has not been re-sent yet, so we will see.

I have a feeling we are not going to get a enough responses and will have to manually collect our answers, by going room to room. I really hope that we will not though that would be a lot more time consuming.

Also, side note. Google Form has a feature that takes your data and puts it into a spread sheet for you, which is nice.