IN THIS CHAPTER

Connecting with other SPSS users on the Internet

Discovering the information you need online

Continuing your journey by finding more advanced content

IBM SPSS Statistics users are all over the world. The Internet is a powerful medium through which you can join the SPSS community, and this chapter points you in the right direction.

Supporting Websites for This Book

You can visit two websites specific to this book. The first is Wiley’s own website, where you can download supporting files for this book. Go to www.dummies.com/go/spss4e.

The second website is keithmccormick.com/SSFD4E. The authors will keep this current with the latest news, updates, and how best to reach out to us with questions.

LinkedIn and LinkedIn Groups

Currently, three SPSS groups are on LinkedIn:

• SPSS Users
• SPSS Power Users
• IBM SPSS Users Forum

Groups wax and wane in popularity, so in LinkedIn it's a good idea to search groups, content, and people for #SPSS. Figure 29-1 displays a button for each of the categories you can search, so you can indicate that you want to search specifically for groups. If you also search for content, you'll see recent posts by LinkedIn members in their feed.

If you find a post that is particularly interesting, consider following that person. On LinkedIn, following is not the same as connecting. Forming a connection requires mutual agreement, but following does not. The follow option is not as prominent in the interface as the connect option, but follow is the better choice if the person whose feed you want to follow doesn't know you.

LinkedIn has hundreds of millions of members worldwide. You can follow your authors Jesus and Keith at their LinkedIn addresses:

• www.linkedin.com/in/jesus-salcedo-1482a24/
• www.linkedin.com/in/keithmccormick/

IBM SPSS Statistics Certification

If you’re in a corporate setting or looking to get a corporate job that involves using SPSS, it may help to get certified in SPSS. For more on IBM’s certification program, go to www.ibm.com/certify/certs.html and search for SPSS to see specific certification programs.

Having this certification listed on your LinkedIn profile or résumé may help when you’re ready to transition to another role or organization. This book will get you well on your way to passing the Level 1 exam, but try the practice questions to get a sense of what you need to review.

Currently, you can find details, including practice questions, about the IBM SPSS Statistics Level 1 certification exam at www.ibm.com/certify/exam?id=C2090-011.

IBM Data Science Community

If you go to the Help menu in SPSS, you'll find a link inviting you to register and join the IBM Data Science Community (or the IBM SPSS Predictive Analytics Community). Make sure to locate and join the SPSS Stats group, which is the official IBM community for SPSS users, by choosing the appropriate topic group. You can also use the following URL: https://community.ibm.com/community/user/datascience/communities/community-home to sign up or log in.

You can import your LinkedIn details to create a profile and link with other social media accounts. A wealth of information is available, including announcements about helpful information, such as webinars. You can also post questions to the forum.

SPSSX-L

SPSSX-L is a listserv, which is an email-based posting system. You send an email to ask questions, and the posts come back to you in the form of email. SPSSX-L predates most of the other resources you’ll find on the Internet. You can subscribe at https://listserv.uga.edu/cgi-bin/wa.

You may find the listserv format surprising if you’re young enough to have always had the Internet. Even if the idea of a listserv is quaint, you don’t want to miss out on the wisdom available through this group. Some of the most knowledgeable and veteran SPSS users are active in SPSSX-L, and they sincerely want to help other users.

To ask a question, simply send an email (instructions are given on the home page) and the system will forward your email to all members. There are instructions on how to cancel if you find that the flow of email is more than you like. You might want to set up an email filter where all the messages from this listserv go to a special folder in your email system, so you can read them when you have the time.

Online Videos

You can find an almost overwhelming number of free and for-fee videos online. Here are some that we have produced ourselves or have seen and recommend. These are for-fee, but can be accessed through both a subscription option or by paying for individual courses:

• Packt (www.packtpub.com):
  • “Learning IBM SPSS Statistics” by Keith McCormick and Jesus Salcedo closely aligns with the content in this book, so check it out if you want to reinforce your learning with video demonstrations.
  • “Basic Statistics and Data Mining for Data Science” by Jesus Salcedo goes deeper into the theory introduced in Part 5.
  • “Advanced Statistics and Data Mining for Data Science” by Jesus Salcedo goes deeper into the theory introduced in Part 5 and beyond with some machine learning topics.
  • “Hands-on Statistical Predictive Modeling” by Jesus Salcedo covers linear regression, logistic regression, and discriminant analysis.
• LinkedIn Learning (www.linkedin.com/learning):
  • “SPSS Statistics Essential Training (2019),” by Bart Poulson, is popular, well done, recently updated, and extensive at six hours.
  • “SPSS for Academic Research” by Yash Patel provides opportunities for practice with the challenge (and solution) at the end of each chapter.
  • “Machine Learning and AI Foundations: Linear Regression” by Keith McCormick is an almost four-hour review of regression features in SPSS, with plenty of discussion of theory and the interpretation of results.

Twitter

Twitter might seem like a strange suggestion at first. After all, what can you learn about SPSS in just 280 characters? A tweet won’t help much, but you can find thought leaders in the SPSS community and the latest and greatest information on SPSS.

Here are some recommendations on whom to follow for IBM and SPSS news:

• IBM Training (@IBMTraining): Official news on IBM training, including SPSS training.
• IBM Data Science (@IBMDataScience): Official related IBM tweets.
• IBM Live (@IBMLive): Tweets about the big annual IBM conferences. The relevant conference for SPSSers is called Think.
• Keith McCormick (@KMcCormickBlog): Keith, one of the authors of this book, follows several hundred accounts, more than half of which are stats, AI, and machine learning related, so checking out his follow list is a great way to get up-to-date recommendations.

Here are some Twitter accounts that are great for data visualization and analytics in general to get you started:

• The American Statistical Association (@AmstatNews): The world’s largest community of statisticians.
• SignificanceAp Magazine (@signmagazine): A joint statistics magazine from @RoyalStatSoc and @AmstatNews. Great source for interesting articles in the magazine and elsewhere.
• Simply Statistics (@simplystats): Blog by Jeff Leek, Roger Peng, and Rafael Irizarry.
• Nathan Yau (@flowingdata): Influential author and blogger specializing in data visualization.
• Edward Tufte (@EdwardTufte): Famous for his data visualization books and harsh critique of PowerPoint presentations.
• Gregory Piatetsky (@kdnuggets): A data scientist, co-founder of KDD conferences and ACM SIGKDD association for Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining, and president of KDnuggets, a leading site on business analytics, data mining, and data science.
• Meta Brown (@metabrown312): Author of Data Mining For Dummies and a thought leader in predictive analytics.
• Hans Rosling (@HansRosling): Brilliant lecturer famous for his TED talks. Rosling passed away in 2017 but the account is still active and run by his son Ola (@OlaRosling).
• Nancy Duarte (@nancyduarte): Author of Slideology and owner of a successful company that polishes corporate presentations. She became famous when she helped Al Gore with his slide presentations.
• Dean Abbott (@DeanAbb): Well-known data miner who speaks at the Predictive Analytics World conferences.
• Andrew Ng (@AndrewYNg): Chief scientist of Baidu, chairman and co-founder of Coursera, and Stanford CS faculty.
• Gil Press (@GilPress): Tech journalist; everything he writes is worth a quick read.
• TED Talks (@TEDTalks): Tweets from the same folks who bring you those great 18-minute video talks.

Live Instruction

You can find plenty of instructors waiting to teach you a live class. Many of these classes are reasonably priced. Both Jesus Salcedo and Keith McCormick (your authors) regularly teach online, sometimes to audiences halfway around the world. For more on current trends in SPSS training, go to http://keithmccormick.com/SPSSTraining.

An entire economy of SPSS software instruction is out there. Following are commonly taught IBM SPSS courses:

• Introduction to SPSS: Similar to this book and where most would start. After reading this book, this course might be a review.
• Introduction to Statistical Analysis: Focuses on the theory with a bit more detail than Part 5.
• Data Management and Manipulation with SPSS: A sequel to Introduction to SPSS but with more focus on preparing data, calculating new variables, and merging files.
• Advanced Statistical Analysis Using SPSS: A sequel to Introduction to Statistical Analysis that uses some of the techniques in the add-on modules discussed in Chapter 28.

Find out who’s teaching the class, and don’t be shy about emailing or chatting with the person before you choose a class. We know most members of the SPSS community, and you can email us ([email protected] and [email protected]) for advice.

If you're taking a course alone, joining a public class might be the most cost-effective, but if two or three people are studying together, a private class might make more sense because you can use your own data and focus on your specific issues. Don’t rush. Do your research.

Asynchronous Instruction and Tutorials

One interesting option for learning SPSS Statistics, especially more advanced topics, is a brown-bag lunch format offered by the Analysis Factor (www.theanalysisfactor.com). They cover advanced topics in non-threatening, shorter formats and also offer more extensive seminars on a variety of topics. The training isn’t limited to SPSS Statistics, but SPSS content is common.

Another option with an extensive list of courses awaits you at Statistics.com (www.statistics.com). These courses are like university short courses, including homework. The classes are typically asynchronous, so you might see recordings of lectures but will also have access to the instructor during the multiple weeks of the course. A long list of statistics professors and textbook authors are among their ranks. Statistics.com offers serious, in-depth classes, which may be just what you’re looking for. We can’t guarantee that SPSS Statistics will be the software tool of choice, so if that’s important to you, check before you enroll. If the class sounds perfect but is taught using another software tool such as Python or R, don’t rule it out.

Finding free SPSS content on the Internet isn’t difficult. The challenge is finding good free content. The folks at UCLA have maintained great SPSS content for years and we highly recommend UCLA’s tutorial. Here are two URLs you should check out:

• https://stats.idre.ucla.edu/spss/
• https://stats.idre.ucla.edu/other/mult-pkg/whatstat/

SPSS Statistics for Data Analysis and Visualization

Your authors, Jesus and Keith, collaborated on SPSS Statistics for Data Analysis and Visualization (Wiley) with their colleagues Jon Peck and Andrew Wheeler. It was explicitly developed to pick up where this book leaves off. By tapping into the wisdom of our coauthors, we managed to have over 100 years of SPSS experience involved in this book.

The book covers the following four major topics:

• Advanced SPSS techniques in the add-on modules: Includes topics such as AMOS, categorical regression, and hierarchical linear models, which are usually not found in other SPSS books but are useful
• Data visualization: Covers advanced charting techniques, including geospatial analysis and techniques requiring the Categories module, such as perceptual mapping
• Predictive analytics and machine learning: Explains neural networks, decision trees, and the basics of predictive analytics using SPSS Statistics
• SPSS programming: Provides 100 pages on topics versus the 20 or so pages in this book

The book doesn’t cover topics you would find in a typical multivariate statistics textbook because many books like that are available, some written for SPSS users. From the start, we attempted to cover the topics that we felt were not covered well elsewhere, so intermediate-level regression, ANOVA, and the basics of experimental design are not covered. If you're new to statistics theory, you'll also need a good intermediate-level statistics book; one recommendation is Using Multivariate Statistics, 7th Edition by Barbara Tabachnick and Linda Fidell (Pearson).

You can find out more about the book, including a sample chapter, at the following two websites:

• www.wiley.com/en-us/SPSS+Statistics+for+Data+Analysis+and+Visualization-p-9781119003557
• keithmccormick.com/SPSSDAV