Understanding Statistics

Introducing undergraduates to the vital concepts of statistics, this superb textbook allows instructors to include as much—or as little—mathematical detail as may be suitable for their students. Featuring Statpal statistical software for the IBM PC®, the book contains study questions that help solidify students’ understanding of the material and prepare them for the next group of concepts. Many of the exercises, labeled “Statpal exercises,” are especially written for the Statpal statistical package. Understanding Statistics begins with the basic concepts of statistical inference … presents normal and binomial distributions, general techniques of interval estimation and hypothesis testing, and applications of these techniques to inferences about a single population mean and proportions … and covers inferences about group differences, including parametric and nonparametric approaches to the two-group case, and the one-way ANOVA and its nonparametric analogue. In addition, this volume considers relationships between two variables, including the correlation co-efficient, Spearman’s rho, and Kendall’s tau ... surveys basic regression methods, including simple, multiple, and stepwise ... and discusses the analysis of variance of factorial designs, the concept of interaction, and the analysis of categorical data using the chi-square test. Complete with tables and drawings plus appendices that furnish instructions for using Statpal software, information on advanced topics, and much more, Understanding Statistics is an ideal text for undergraduate survey courses on statistical methods as well as for courses in economics, psychology, sociology, education, business administration, and others that require basic statistics.