Drawing upon over 40 years of teaching experience, the authors of this highly accessible book provide a clear and methodical approach to essential statistical procedures. They use plain language to explain concepts, employ engaging examples, and incorporate extensive exercises to insure a better understanding of the material. The book successfully demystifies such commonly troublesome topics as the standard deviation, hypothesis testing, confidence intervals, degrees of freedom, p-values, and estimates of effect size. Throughout its pages, concepts are emphasized rather than computations.

Table of Contents

1. Introduction. PART I. Descriptive Statistics. 2. Describing Data with Tables and Graphs. 3. Describing Data with Averages. 4. Describing Variability. 5. Standard Scores (z) and Normal Distributions. 6. Describing Relationships: Correlation. 7. Regression. PART II. Inferential Statistics. 8. Populations, Samples, and Probability. 9. Sampling Distribution of the Mean. 10. Introduction to Hypothesis Testing: the z Test. 11. More about Hypothesis Testing. 12. Estimation (Confidence Intervals). 13. t Test for One Sample. 14. t Test for Two Independent Samples. 15. t Test for Two Related Samples (Repeated Measures). 16. Analysis of Variance (One Factor). 17. Analysis of Variance (Repeated Measures). 18. Analysis of Variance (Two Factors). 19. Chi-Square Test for Qualitative (Nominal) Data. 20. Tests for Ranked (Ordinal) Data. 21. Postscript: Which Test? Appendices. A. Math Review. B. Answers to Selected Questions. C. Tables. D. Glossary. Index.