DAMCA Companion

Introduction

This under construction site is the result of my engagement with Data Analysis: A Model Comparison Approach to Regression, ANOVA, and Beyond by Josh Correll, Abigail M. Folberg, Charles M. Judd, Gary H. McClelland, Carey S. Ryan.

The book is pretty good1 and I chose it recently as it “thinks” about models the way I have tried to teach students. I think it’s also pitched at a good level for graduate students who don’t have much stats background and probably for advanced social/behavioral science undergrads (though I haven’t taught them this yet).

1 I have a few beefs with the book: the interpretation of odds ratios, the discussion of variable transformations via the ladder of powers, the lack of to contingency tables come to mind. But overall, the book has been a good interlocutor.

I wanted to supplement the text myself for three main reasons:

  1. The book itself doesn’t have any code (which is good!) and the accompanying instructor/student resources are written in base R. I wanted to translate things to tidyverse style to fit my own and my students’ preferred usage.

  2. The book focuses on analytical approaches whereas I find it useful to demonstrate most concepts using simulations. I think this is easier for people who don’t have a strong math background.

  3. I wanted a reason to fool around systematically with tinyplot. I’m usually a {ggplot2} person, but for some reason I’ve been obsessed with {tinyplot} lately. Am I eventually going to regret this unholy alliance of tidyverse and tinyplot? Probably. But not today!

One more thing: as this document has grown, I’ve added a several sections and subsections marked with a *, that indicate that I’m adding stuff that’s not in the book. I now have a lot of that content which I hope people will find useful.