Stats gadgets

I was watching a very cool lecture last night on TED. I had never heard of TED until a few months ago, and now I love it. If I’m not careful, I can get sucked in and watch for hours.

At any rate, the presentation below is outstanding. As a wannabe statistician (and I use that term loosely), I love seeing how people display stats and engage the audience in snooze-worthy lectures that involve the “d” word….DATA! Hans Rosling does a great job here and it turns out that Google Docs offers a free program similar to the one Hans uses in this presentation. It’s called Motion Charts and my goal is to find a way to use something like this in my own research. And here’s another link worth checking out for more examples of making stats fun.

How can this be fun?

When thinking about my research, I keep reminding myself that it has to be relevant and it has to be interesting. And I don’t mean relevant and interesting to me…it has to be relevant and interesting to other people outside of my field. Better yet, my research would have real-world implications that people could use in practice. The last thing I want is to conduct a year or two worth of research, only to have it sit on a shelf somewhere to collect dust. I’d hate for my dissertation to be full of philosophical mumbo jumbo that only academics can understand, and I’d hate it even more if my work puts someone to sleep after reading the first few pages. These are my biggest fears as a researcher — I’m afraid of becoming so detached from the “real world” that all my work means nothing to the average Joe.