The things I messed up

When you write 1000 pages of stuff, invariably you mess some things up. Imperfections should be embraced, so here is a list of mine for you to embrace or get annoyed at me about. Hopefully the former.

Chapter 5

Smart Alex Tasks 1-6

The first 6 Smart Alex tasks in Chapter 5 claim to relate to data used in Chapter 4. My first error is that the text for Task 1 says Chapter 3, not 4. This pales into insignificance compared to the mess arising from the fact that in this edition of the book I changed the data in Chapter 4, meaning that these examples don’t relate to anything in Chapter 4 (or indeed any other chapter). Oops. Fun times.

The easiest fix to this is to read Task 1 as

The file students.sav contains data relating to groups of students and lecturers. Using these data plot and interpret an error bar chart showing the mean number of friends that students and lecturers have.

The data are included as part of the data files for the book.

Chapter 5

Smart Alex Task 3

It should ask you to save the data as teaching.sav to correspond with the accompanying .sav file.

Chapter 5

Smart Alex Task 4

The variable beauty should be status.

Smart Alex Task 8

The data file you need is teaching.sav not teach_method.sav.

Chapter 12

Smart Alex Task 1

The variable percentage is actually called exam in the data file.

Chapter 13

Smart Alex Task 7

I deleted the corresponding task in Chapter 11 mentioned in the task because of moving some material out of that chapter. This task should, therefore, be:

Fit a linear model predicting life satisfaction from the type of pet and the effect of love of animals using what you learnt in Chapter 9. Compare this model to your results for Task 6. What differences do you notice and why?

Chapter 14

Smart Alex Task 9

For the variable console 0 = Switch, not Wii.

Chapter 21

  • p. 1010: “We are fitting a theory-based model that includes the random intercept and slope of surgery across clinics.” should be “We are fitting a theory-based model that includes the random intercept and slope of days across clinics.”