Page 9 - Statistics for Dummies

Table of Contents
Introduction ................................................................. 1
About This Book ..............................................................................................1
Conventions Used in This Book .....................................................................2
What You’re Not to Read ................................................................................2
Foolish Assumptions .......................................................................................3
How This Book Is Organized ..........................................................................3
Part I: Vital Statistics about Statistics .................................................3
Part II: Number-Crunching Basics ........................................................4
Part III: Distributions and the Central Limit Theorem ......................4
Part IV: Guesstimating and Hypothesizing with Confi dence ............4
Part V: Statistical Studies and the Hunt
for a Meaningful Relationship ...........................................................5
Part VI: The Part of Tens .......................................................................5
Icons Used in This Book .................................................................................6
Where to Go from Here ...................................................................................6
Part I: Vital Statistics about Statistics ........................... 7
Chapter 1: Statistics in a Nutshell. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .9
Thriving in a Statistical World .......................................................................9
Designing Appropriate Studies ....................................................................11
Surveys ..................................................................................................11
Experiments ..........................................................................................12
Collecting Quality Data .................................................................................12
Selecting a good sample ......................................................................13
Avoiding bias in your data ..................................................................13
Creating Effective Summaries ......................................................................14
Descriptive statistics ...........................................................................14
Charts and graphs ...............................................................................15
Determining Distributions ............................................................................16
Performing Proper Analyses ........................................................................17
Margin of error and confi dence intervals .........................................17
Hypothesis tests ..................................................................................18
Correlation, regression, and two-way tables ....................................20
Drawing Credible Conclusions .....................................................................21
Reeling in overstated results ..............................................................21
Questioning claims of cause and effect.............................................21
Becoming a Sleuth, Not a Skeptic ................................................................22

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