PSA

In the word "spurious," just in case you were in doubt, there is a "y" sound between the "sp" and the "ur."

Everyone who has said it aloud in my stats class, including the instructor, says "spur" + "ious," as if it ought to mean "full of spurs." Roy Rogers takes on multiple regression. Or something like that.

Perhaps I am sensitive to missing "y" sounds because I spent 23 years telling people my last name had a hidden "y" sound in the middle. My father-in-law still doesn't know how to pronounce it. It's not that weird, I'm telling you.

When I was first contemplating a return to grad school, I thought it would be great to have a dashing and handsome math geek for a husband because he could help me with my stats questions. Alas, it doesn't work like that. If I am wrestling with something he finds trivially easy, it is not a recipe for a helpful conversation. So I will tell you, my pals in the computer, that I am utterly flummoxed by the chapter on curvilinear regression that I set out to read at 2pm and still have not finished.

Random example: "The cross-product vectors represent the interaction. The approach is similar when the design includes continuous and categorical independent vectors. The latter are coded in the usual manner and the former are coded by orthogonal polynomial coefficients." [faint whimper]

None of the stuff we have been doing is really very complicated. Simple linear regression looks at the way that one variable can predict or explain another, like SATs and college GPA. Multiple regression throws other explanatory variables in there: motivation bumps GPA up and weekly alcohol consumption brings it down, and we can figure out how important those effects will be. Curvilinear regression is just the idea that lots of important relationships don't look like straight lines and we need to be able to explain them too. So I went sailing into the chapter with confidence, but there is no wind in my sails at the moment.

Probably I will get more out of tomorrow's lecture if I go to bed than if I stay up blogging, though, you figure? Over and out from a weary moi.