About this site
Scope of This Blog
This blog will provide support, resources, and discussion relating to use of SPSS statistical software at the College of the Holy Cross. In addition, this site will serve as a portal to other statistical software, data analysis and visualization techniques, and applications.
Using This Blog
The core of this blog consists of postings and comments on postings, the subject matter of which pertains to using SPSS software and related topics. In order to post to this blog and to comment on existing postings, you must log in with your Holy Cross user name and password (your Novell network login). To do this, click “Login” under the Miscellaneous menu item on the right-hand side of the home page. Although this blog can be read and searched by anyone on the Internet, posting and commenting are restricted to Holy Cross faculty, staff, and students. Postings are assigned to various categories, are searchable, and are archived, so that the collection of postings and comments can function as a knowledge base on statistical methodology. Also under Miscellaneous are two links that allow you to subscribe to entries (that is, postings) and comments from this blog. Clicking “Entries RSS” or “Comments RSS” will allow you to be notified of new postings and comments by your favorite aggregator, such as Google Reader.
How to Post
Click here for detailed instructions on how to post to this blog. Briefly, log in with your Holy Cross user name and password, then click “Site Admin” under Miscellaneous. Next click “Write,” and from there, basically fill in the blanks. Click “Publish” to send your post to the blog. You can subsequently edit or delete your post if you wish. You will see an “Edit” icon (it’s a pencil) next to items that you can edit. Also, when you first log in, you can click “Write a Post” directly from your Wordpress dashboard.
You Can Post Questions
This, in fact, is encouraged. You can of course also e-mail me with questions, but if I receive an interesting SPSS or statistics query via e-mail I will most likely write a post myself about the subject of the query. As the database of posts increases, the chance that you will find an answer to your question among the posts (the “knowledgebase“) increases. The “Search” box is always available and allows you to search the database of posts.
More on Searching
The Search box will search all posts, comments, and pages (like this one) in the blog. Your search terms will be highlighted in the search results. If you are looking at some search results and don’t see any highlighted search terms in a post, it means the search engine found the search term(s) in a comment for that post; open the comment and you should see some highlighted search terms. If your search term occurs in a comment, you will have to click on the comment in the search results to see its contents; it won’t open automatically. Basic searching procedures apply. For example, searching for lake trout will will find all occurrences of lake or trout as well as both words together. But entering “lake trout” enclosed in double quotes will find all occurrences of that exact phrase. Searching is not case-sensitive, so “lake trout” will return the same results as “LAKE TROUT.” Be sure to use double quotes, not single quotes.
Links (URLs) to Posts
If you want a permanent link (URL) to a post, right-click the title of the post and use the pop-up menu to copy the post’s URL. You can then paste the link somewhere else, e-mail it to a friend, etc.
Caveat emptor
Every effort is made to ensure that information presented in this blog is accurate. However, no warranty is given or implied.
I, as Blogmeister, reserve the right to edit or delete any posting deemed inappropriate for this forum.
Acknowledgements
Thanks to James Pinkerton and Greg Rodenhiser, Holy Cross Information Technology Services, for facilitating and setting up this blog.
This blog is maintained by Richard Lent.
e-mail: rlent@holycross.edu
