Statistical Methods 1A

Course Convener:

Dr Pete Bibby

About the Course:

Human beings are all different. If we want to evaluate the effects of therapy or the usefulness of a certain teaching method (say), we have to take this variability into account. Statistical techniques enable us to find out whether, for example, the therapy is effective despite the fact that not everyone will react in the same way. In this module, we will introduce the simplest statistical techniques which allow this.

Aims and Objectives:

The aims of the course are to provide students with an understanding of the issues that underlie experimental design, the procedures for calculating descriptive and non-parametric inferential statistics, and guidelines for the use of these statistical techniques.

Method and frequency of class:

One lecture per week with tutorial support.

Recommended Reading:

Most of introductory statistics books cover a lot of the 1st and 2nd semester statistics courses but not all. At the same time, the mathematical notation varies very slightly from book to book. For this reason, I have listed a selection of books that you may wish to buy.

Easy

Learning to Use Statistical Tests in Psychology by Judith Greene and Manuela D'Oliviera.

Experimental Design and Statistics by Steve Miller

Moderate

Taking the Fear Out of Data Analysis by Adamantios Diamantopoulos and Bodo B Schlegelmilch.

Statistics and Research Design in the Behavioural Sciences by Richard S Lehman.

Difficult (but good)

Statistical Methods for Psychology (4th ed.) by David C. Howell.

Statistical Reasoning in Psychology and Education by Edward W. Minium, Bruce M. King and Gordon Bear.

Lectures:

Each of the lectures in the course is accompanied by a handout. Example problems worksheets and answers are handed out during the course.

Lecture 1: Introduction to Statistics and Why We Bother.

Lecture 2: Science and Experimentation.

Lecture 3: Experimental Design

Lecture 4: Descriptive Statistics - Measures of Central Tendency

Lecture 5: Descriptive Statistics - Measures of Variability and Form

Lecture 6: The Chi-Square test.

Lecture 7: 2-Level Non-Parametric Tests.

Lecture 8: More than 2-Level Non-Parametric Tests

Lecture 9: Non-Parametric Tests of Trend

Lecture 10: Pearson & Spearman Correlation Coefficients

Lecture 11: Revision

Method of Evaluation:

A one hour exam at the end of the semester. The exam consists of four questions and students are expected to answer at least two.