================================================================== The gateway between this list and the sci.stat.edu newsgroup will be disabled on June 9. This list will be discontinued on June 21. Subscribe to the new list EDSTAT-L at Penn State using the web interface at http://lists.psu.edu/archives/edstat-l.html. ================================================================== . Anders D Hojen wrote: > Thanks to all who took time to give me good advice (Jim, Thom, Dennis, > Lise, Ray, and Richard). As a starting point, I tried to avoid > calculating syllables/second because it is difficult to judge when > people ad or delete syllables from a word. However, it may be the best > way out. > > There were several suggested alternatives to the z-score approach (log > scores, covariant, and syllables/second). I take the listing of > alternatives to mean that the z-score approach is not preferable; maybe > particularly because it neutralizes within-group main effects (It was so > nice to get rid of those main effects, though). If anybody thinks that > there is NO problem with neutralizing certain main effects by using > z-scores, let them speak up now or forever hold there peace!
I don't think it is a particular problem that the z transformation removes uninteresting main effects (ANOVA seems robust to similar problems for ipsative data such as ranks where the some means is constrained to add to a constant). I think the specific problem is that no-one else is convinced that the z transform directly addresses the syllable length problem. Thom
