If anything, though, there are now just too many and their character development is so restricted that they end up looking like a bit of a gimmick, and being a bit of a distraction: OditiвЂ™s lantern, one of the new ones, ends up being an eight-line signpost to an online video tutorial. Labcoat Leni is a good one, providing data from real research studies, though often with an informal twist, like the one about the relationship between the ratings of the attractiveness of women and their tendency to gossip. There are lots of other characters with their own little narratives too. See? Charming and illustrative! In fact, the device of using stories about growing up to reflect the increasing complexity of the concepts and techniques described makes for a book that you might actually want to read even when you donвЂ™t have to, just to see what happens next. For example, Chapter 5 вЂThe beast of biasвЂ™ starts with the story of how young Andy wanted to be a football goalkeeper just like his granddad despite being impractically short for the role. This is a statistics book that seeks to make stats more warm-and-fuzzy then cold-sweat.ДЇield quite deliberately weaves stories about his personal life throughout the book, beginning each chapter with an anecdote that alludes to the subject of that chapter. Field has a self-deprecating way of pretending to be a mere psychologist while explaining complex statistical concepts in a way that demonstrates a better understanding than Mann, Whitney, and Hugh put together.

There are hidden references to Iron Maiden songs throughout.

The author is on Twitter and tweets about cats a lot. It used to be called вЂњDiscovering statistics using SPSS and sex and drugs and rock вЂnвЂ™ rollвЂќ but the fourth edition has relegated the sex and drugs and rock вЂnвЂ™ roll to the inside cover, where youвЂ™ll also see lots of pictures of cats.

Spss ibm andy field