Making Sense of Statistics: A Non-Mathematical Approach

ISBN-13: 9781403901071 / Angielski / Miękka / 2017 / 209 str.

Michael Wood

Opis

Making Sense of Statistics provides a thorough, but accessible, introduction to statistics and probability, without the distractions of mathematics. The book does not require you to use any algebraic formulae or equations, but it does explain how and why methods work, and exactly what answers mean. Guidance is provided on how to design investigations, analyze data and interpret results. There are exercises and case studies from a variety of areas of application, and an accompanying website from which interactive spreadsheet models and data files can be downloaded.

Spis treści

Introduction: Statistics, Non-mathematical Methods and How to Use this Book.- Probability, Samples, Buckets and Balls.- Summing Things Up: Graphs, Averages, Standard Deviations, Correlations and so on.- Why Use Statistics? Pros, Cons and Alternatives.- Calculating Probabilities: Mental Ball Crunching and Computer Games.- Possible Worlds and Actual Worlds: How Can We Decide What's True?.- How Big is the Error? Confidence Intervals.- Checking if Anything is Going On: Tests of Null Hypotheses.- Predicting the Unpredictable, or Explaining the Inexplicable: Regression Models.- How to Do It and What Does It Mean? The Design and Interpretation of Investigations.- Appendix A: Using Spreadsheets (Excel) for Statistics.- Appendix B: A Brief Guide to the Statistical Package, SPSS.- Appendix C: Data and Program Files for Downloading.- Appendix D: Comments on Some of the Exercises.- Notes.- References.- Index.

O autorze

MICHAEL WOOD is a Lecturer at Portsmouth University. He has taught statistics and related areas to undergraduates, postgraduate and research students in a range of disciplines, and to participants on short courses for business organizations. He has published widely on statistics and research methods, business and management, and education.