Statistics in Plain English, Third Edition

Book excerpt: This inexpensive paperback provides a brief, simple overview of statistics to help readers gain a better understanding of how statistics work and how to interpret them correctly. Each chapter describes a different statistical technique, ranging from basic concepts like central tendency and describing distributions to more advanced concepts such as t tests, regression, repeated measures ANOVA, and factor analysis. Each chapter begins with a short description of the statistic and when it should be used. This is followed by a more in-depth explanation of how the statistic works. Finally, each chapter ends with an example of the statistic in use, and a sample of how the results of analyses using the statistic might be written up for publication. A glossary of statistical terms and symbols is also included. New features in the third edition include: a new chapter on Factor and Reliability Analysis especially helpful to those who do and/or read survey research, new "Writing it Up" sections demonstrate how to write about and interpret statistics seen in books and journals, a website at http://www.psypress.com/statistics-in-plain-english with PowerPoint presentations, interactive problems (including an overview of the problem's solution for Instructors) with an IBM SPSS dataset for practice, videos of the author demonstrating how to calculate and interpret most of the statistics in the book, links to useful websites, and an author blog, new section on understanding the distribution of data (ch. 1) to help readers understand how to use and interpret graphs, many more examples, tables, and charts to help students visualize key concepts. Statistics in Plain English, Third Edition is an ideal supplement for statistics, research methods, and/or for courses that use statistics taught at the undergraduate or graduate level, or as a reference tool for anyone interested in refreshing their memory about key statistical concepts. The research examples are from psychology, education, and other social and behavioral sciences.