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History: One day a psychologist was trying to predict social ineptitude from 666 predictor variables. He had so many variables and his sample size was so small that his computer went into meltdown. The processor heated up until it was steaming. Earlier on that day, the psychologist had sneezed on his computer, spraying its components with his mucus. As the processor got hotter, the DNA in that mucus mutated and grew. With each mutation, the DNA consumed the equations on which the processor was working. About 65 minutes later, a small child wondered what he was doing inside a computer (well, he would have done had he been even remotely aware of what a computer was, who he was, or anything really). The psychologist, realising he had created a monster, shipped it off to a 'normal' family. He left it on a doorstep with a note: "Please look after Gertrude". They thought "Gertrude" was a stupid name for a boy. That child was me: underneath this skin I am numbers without a soul.
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Some Boring Information about Me
Job:
- Reader in Experimental Psychopathology
Qualifications:
- D.Phil. (Psychology) University of Sussex
- B.Sc. (Psychology), City University
Awards:
- 2007 British Psychological Society Book Award for 'Discovering Statistics Using SPSS'
- 2005 British Psychological Society Award for Excellence in the Teaching of Psychology.
- 2001 Sussex University Teaching Award
Publications:
A Quick Guide to My Web Pages
Research: My primary function is as a researcher. My main research interests are in how anxiety develops in childhood. However, I did my Ph.D. on human conditioning and specifically whether preferences can be acquired through conditioning. Also, because I am incredibly sad beyond all belief I do dabble in a bit of statistics research too: what can I say, autistic tendencies are best channeled into these sorts of pursuits.
Teaching: My secondary function is teaching. In some bizarre twist of fate I turned out to be someone who loves teaching, not bizarre in itself, but bizarre when you consider the subject I love teaching: Statistics. I wasn't always a Stats Geek (in fact I still know a considerable amount less about statistics than people seem to think) and I used to gibber at the very mention of t-tests. So that my students hopefully don't have to gibber quite as much as I used to, I've taken the time to put together some resources that students (and anyone else in the world) can access such as lecture notes, handouts, data files and stuff. Welcome to statistics hell ...
Books: I've written some books. You might already have bought one of them, or you might have better things to spend your money on, you might have liked them, you might have wasted your money, you might be a ballet dancing Komodo dragon. Who knows? One thing is for sure, if you follow the link you'll find lots of information about my books (I particularly recommend the Discovering Catistics' Link ...).
Life: Obviously, being the statistics-loving social outcast that I am, I have no life. I spend every hour of the day excitedly studying numbers and Greek letters. You can believe that, or you can investigate what little life I have when not busy being the evil be-horned ruler of statistics hell.
Contact: You can, if you like, contact me. I have no social skills, so it's at your own peril .. I might just cry and hide in a corner.
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They employ me, they must be obeyed, they implore US to join them: 'join US' they say. We let them believe we have but only we know the truth. |