Statistics

2019 Already

Welcome back.

Be honest. You thought the Cat was dead, eh?  Nothing for two years – the silence had become deafening.

But fret not. We were here all the time, just hibernating and doing other stuff that had to be done.

And we’re back!

You don’t want to be told that “I’m not afraid of Multiple Regression” is on its way, or that “Nathan and Badger” is just awaiting a cover. It’s all still true, but you’ve heard it before. You want new news, news like….

  • Tim Hooper has written a follow up to his excellent “Toward the Heart of Counselling”. It’s just being edited and should be here SOON.
  • Morgan Twining is putting the finishing touches on ‘”Crabble”, where you will meet the very same Crabble as you encountered in “Mr Crabble’s Heroic Limericks for Reckless Girls and Boys”.  It will be with you SOON.
  • Neil Scott really, really is finishing off “I’m not afraid of Multiple Regression” (even though we said we wouldn’t mention it) and it will be with you SOONISH.
  • And as we’ve mentioned that we will also mention that “Nathan and Badger” will be here sooner than SOONISH.

We are so excited we are going to do our breathing exercises then eat cake.

Be assured that Caustic Cat will continue to make the world a better, happier, smilier, prettier place in 2019.

Wishing everyone a splendid New Year.

Yours

The Caustic Cat

 

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So how accurate is a Caustic Cat?

In our last enthralling blog we boldly proclaimed that if we didn’t get a new book out by the end of the year, it would be reasonable to state that we are ‘not really very accurate’.

Well, we didn’t get a new book out.

So are we ‘not really very accurate’?

We have two potential responses to this.  The first is in the spirit of the new politics; just lie about it and blame someone else which is, to be honest, rather appealing.  But that is not the Caustic Cat way.

No, bold lies are not for us.  We prefer a second, rather more sneaky and evasive approach. So how’s this…..

We didn’t get a new book out and so it could be said of us that we were ‘not really very accurate’ but that was last year and, so far this year, we have a 100% accuracy rating, so let’s look to the future and not to the past.  To summarise, we are jolly accurate.

Not great, but it will have to do.

But now, let’s get down to business. News for the new year!

We have a NEW cover for Neil Scott’s “I’m not afraid of Logistic Regression”, the cheeriest introduction to Logistic Regression you are likely to find.  Why the change?  We’re too scared to tell you but it really is a very good reason.

The much delayed and requested “I’m not afraid of Multiple Regression” is still being written – it’s not been forgotten or neglected, oh no, it’s still coming.

We’ve seen a surge in sales for Tim Hooper’s excellent ‘Towards the Heart of Counselling’ – hurrah for Tim – we suggest you bombard us with requests for a follow up volume.

Morgan Twining’s adventure story for reckless children, ‘Nathan and Badger’, is just having it’s cover finalised and is then ready to go.

Finally, it has been pointed out to us by a refreshingly well-informed 12-year-old that one meaning of ‘caustic’ is ‘dissolves flesh’.  We’ll just leave it at that.

Have a splendid 2017

The Caustic Cat

 

 

 

Caustic Cat’s Christmas Message

We’re sorry. We were so busy having Christmas that we forgot to send you a Christmas message.

We are desolate. Excepting that we had rather a nice time and forgot to feel guilty about it, so not really terribly desolate at all.

How shall we make it up to you? Well, we have thought of a few ways.

Firstly, we’re going to bring you some FREE excerpts from Neil Scott’s “I’m not afraid of Logistic Regression” book, so that’s pretty marvellous.

Also, we are going to be releasing his “I’m not afraid of Multiple Regression” in 2016. (We had promised this for 2015 but to make it even more exciting we have delayed it. Yes, that is a poorly disguised attempt to make our tardiness look like a good thing, but you are probably getting the idea that we’re pretty shameless now, so we won’t worry about it.)

Next, 2016 sees the release of Morgan Twining’s “Nathan and Badger”, (which we think is excellent); a comic adventure for 8-14 year olds but also for some people who are younger and even more who are older.

We will also be releasing Morgan’s “Mr Crabble” (which Mr Crabble thinks is excellent and has pointed out that that is all that matters). This is the novel (again, for the ‘8 and under’ and ’14 and over’ group i.e. just about everyone) about Mr Crabble who wrote those superb limericks (you can even buy them by looking for “Mr Crabble’s Heroic Limericks for Reckless Girls and Boys” at the Amazon Kindle store).

And Tim Hooper may even release another counselling book if you are lucky, and we hope you are.

So, you can see that we are planning a wonderful 2016, and that is just for the start of the year!

We’re so excited we are going to go and sit down. We will drink tea and eat ‘bad foods’ as well. And rest. We think we deserve it.

So, we hope you have a wonderful New Year and we hope we have one too. Won’t that be great?

Caustic Cat

Free Logistic Regression?

Surely not?  Can Logistic Regression even be free?

Let me explain.

In the coming weeks we’re going to be posting some selections from Neil Scott’s “I’m not afraid of Logistic Regression” and you get to read them free.

How exciting is that?

Don’t answer; it’s rhetorical.

It’s exciting, OK? It will give you a bit of an introduction to Logistic Regression and a feel for the style of the book.

So something should appear soon and that has to be good news eh?

See you soon

Caustic Cat

p.s. This is NOT our Christmas message. You’ll have to wait for that.

Logistic AND Multiple Regression?

Yes, not satisfied with having brought you Dr Neil Scott’s well-received “I’m not afraid of Logistic Regression”, we are in the throws of getting his “I’m not afraid of Multiple Regression” ready.

To the uninitiated it may look like he is just going to publish the same book but change one word in the title as a cynical way of making extra cash.  Not so.  Multiple Regression is a very different beast to Logistic Regression (he assures us) and is both easier to get to grips with and more widely used.  Where Logistic Regression is a way of exploring group membership statistically (e.g. ‘how does this group differ from that group?’ and ‘oh look, I can predict which group you are most likely to be in’), Multiple Regression is concerned with scales. Scales like ‘how much people earn’, ‘how tall they are going to be as an adult’, ‘how long they are likely to live’ and ‘how much of this drug is the right amount of this drug (medicinally, not recreationally, you understand)’.  All popular research questions.

Like Logistic Regression, the book is designed to be a friendly and accessible introduction to the statistic, primarily aimed at students ‘and people like them’.  Scheduled for release in December it will include fully worked analyses that you can follow using data available for download from this very site.  Whilst written with users of MS Excel and IBM’s SPSS in mind, it should prove helpful for all those who need to get to grips with Multiple Regression.

Don’t pretend you’re not excited; you’re desperate for this book.

Other than that, have a lovely week.

Caustic Cat

Logistic Regression published!

Exciting news!  Caustic Cat has just published it’s first book – Dr Neil Scott’s “I’m not afraid of Logistic Regression”.  This light-hearted introduction for students walks the uninitiated, the worried and the plain confused through a series of fictional studies to equip them with the basic information they need to set up, run and interpret their own analysis.

You can get the book at the Amazon score – it costs around $4.99/£3.29/€somethingsimilar.  Just type in “I’m not afraid of Logistic Regression” or, if you’re a bit busy, just type “Logistic regression” and scroll down.

It’s a bit early for reviews so we thought we’d write a few of our own, all of which will be replaced in due course.

“A thumping good read”

“Makes Shakespeare look like a pile of old shopping lists”

“Rip-snorting” (actually that was about another book but we liked the word)

“If this book was a horse I’d marry it”

We will probably take this post down once we’ve all calmed down and thought about it a bit, but for the moment we are just too excited to act rationally.

Enjoy

Caustic Cat

Logistic Regression book for students immanent

I guess most people are frantically excited about the idea of a Logistic Regression book for students? One that doesn’t assume that you are entirely comfortable with the language of statistics, that is aware that you don’t want to see a scary equation that stretches over three pages or blithely assumes that ‘multi-collinearity’ is a term that bounces back and forth across your breakfast table each sunny morn?

If so, then you will be greeting the news that Neil Scott’s ‘I’m not afraid of Logistic Regression’ should be with us any day now with undiluted joy. Even better; as it is an e-book you don’t have to do the whole ‘queuing outside Waterstones or Barnes & Noble till midnight in case they run out’ sort of thing. No, life is much easier than that. We’ll just yell when it is here and you can amble along to the Amazon Kindle store in the comfort of your armchair.

A small act of kindness from Caustic Cat.

Have a lovely day

Caustic Cat