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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.>
List of contents
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.
About the author
Michael Wood
