PERHAPS A GIFT VOUCHER FOR MUM?: MOTHER'S DAY
William W. Dressler , professor of anthropology at the University of Alabama, USA is a medical anthropologist with interests in culture theory, community studies, research methods, and the relationship between culture and disease. He has adapted models of psychosocial stress to examine the association between social and cultural factors and the risk of chronic disease, including cardiovascular disease. His recent work emphasizes concepts and methods needed to evaluate the health effects of individual efforts to achieve culturally defined goals and aspirations, and he has helped develop research methods for the study of connections among cultural, individual, and biological spheres. His research has been conducted in settings as diverse as urban Great Britain, the Southeast U.S., the West Indies, Mexico, and Samoa.
Dressler moves so skillfully from basic to advanced topics for example, showing how correlation, which is clearly explained, lies behind more complex analyses like multiple regression and cultural consensus that readers will barely recall how they managed to take in so much in so few pages. Not concerned with statistics per se, Dressler offers instead something more subtle and ambitious: a primer on the art and logic of statistical thinking, which aims to transform how anthropologists, in particular, conceptualize ethnographic research and analysis. Jeffrey G. Snodgrass, Colorado State Universit Dressler demystifies the essentials of statistics and lays a solid groundwork for anthropologists either hoping to get their feet wet or planning for more advanced training. Daniel Hruschka, Arizona State University The 5 Things You Need to Know About Statistics: A Meditation on Quantification in Anthropology is a terrific book. Since the subject is quantification, please let me count the ways. First, it features a truly revolutionary format, focusing upon statistical thinking, rather than statistical doing. Because it carefully examines the underlying logic of statistical concepts, it is more than another cookbook in which readers mechanically pick and choose statistical recipes at the risk of not fully understanding them. Particularly important, Dressler explains statistical significance with regard to the more intuitive concept of confidence. As a result, readers will gain a deeper understanding of probability values generated by statistical tests and how to interpret them. This alone is worth the price of the book. Second, the book uses only one data set, which is analyzed from a variety of different perspectives to address related, but still different, questions. This provides a sense of continuity lacking in other statistical books, in which new statistical tests are invariably accompanied by new data sets. Third, the data set selected is one that ethnographers, a group not renowned for quantitative approaches, can understand as of value. Fourth, while focusing on five basic statistical concepts, Dressler shows how these form the foundation for other more complex statistical analyses used in anthropology. As Dressler warns, quantitative methods are not inherently easy, but this book provides a clear, coherent perspective to this underutilized approach in anthropology. So, whether you are a newbie to quantitative approaches, or need a refresher before tackling multivariate analyses, this is the book for you. Eric A Roth, University of Victoria Dressler moves so skillfully from basic to advanced topics--for example, showing how correlation, which is clearly explained, lies behind more complex analyses like multiple regression and cultural consensus--that readers will barely recall how they managed to take in so much in so few pages. Not concerned with statistics per se, Dressler offers instead something more subtle and ambitious: a primer on the art and logic of statistical thinking, which aims to transform how anthropologists, in particular, conceptualize ethnographic research and analysis. --Jeffrey G. Snodgrass, Colorado State Universit Dressler demystifies the essentials of statistics and lays a solid groundwork for anthropologists either hoping to get their feet wet or planning for more advanced training. --Daniel Hruschka, Arizona State University The 5 Things You Need to Know About Statistics: A Meditation on Quantification in Anthropology is a terrific book. Since the subject is quantification, please let me count the ways. First, it features a truly revolutionary format, focusing upon statistical thinking, rather than statistical doing. Because it carefully examines the underlying logic of statistical concepts, it is more than another cookbook in which readers mechanically pick and choose statistical recipes at the risk of not fully understanding them. Particularly important, Dressler explains statistical significance with regard to the more intuitive concept of confidence. As a result, readers will gain a deeper understanding of probability values generated by statistical tests and how to interpret them. This alone is worth the price of the book. Second, the book uses only one data set, which is analyzed from a variety of different perspectives to address related, but still different, questions. This provides a sense of continuity lacking in other statistical books, in which new statistical tests are invariably accompanied by new data sets. Third, the data set selected is one that ethnographers, a group not renowned for quantitative approaches, can understand as of value. Fourth, while focusing on five basic statistical concepts, Dressler shows how these form the foundation for other more complex statistical analyses used in anthropology. As Dressler warns, quantitative methods are not inherently easy, but this book provides a clear, coherent perspective to this underutilized approach in anthropology. So, whether you are a newbie to quantitative approaches, or need a refresher before tackling multivariate analyses, this is the book for you. --Eric A Roth, University of Victoria
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