| Making Sense of Statistics |
| A Non-Mathematical Approach |
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August 2003 |
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138mm x 216mm |
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£12.99 |
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1-4039-0107-4 |
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224 Pages |
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Paperback |
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'I would recommend this book to any student following a non-science type of course at university.' - Susan Starkings, Significance (Magazine of The Royal Statistical Society)
'There
is a lot of very helpful...text explaining the concepts, and also
giving many practical hints for particular situations...the style of
presentation is very good, giving an impression that the book is a
pleasure to read and relatively easy to understand...In any case, it is
very interesting to know that most of the basic ideas of statistics can
be consistantly and nicely explained with surprisingly simple
means...The book can definately be very helpful for anyone who needs to
know about statistics.' - Journal of Operational Research Society
'There
is a lot of very helpful in-line text explaining the concepts, and also
giving many practical hints for particular situations...the style of
presentation is very good, giving an impression that the book is a
pleasure to read and relatively easy to understand...The book can
definitely be very helpful for anyone who needs to know about
statistics. I think that it may successfully be used as a course
text...I think I may recommend it also as a text for additional or,
maybe better yet., after-reading for students who follow a classical
statistics course.' - Journal of the Operational Research Society |
| 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. |
| 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 |
| 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. |
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