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| About the book |
IF YOU'RE ENCOUNTERING STATISTICS FOR THE FIRST TIME, AND WANT A READABLE, SUPPORTIVE INTRODUCTION, THEN THIS IS THE BOOK FOR YOU. There are plenty of excellent stats books in the world, but very few of them are entertaining reading. One result is that many students are deterred by stats. But this book is different. Written in an informal style, it guides the reader gently through the field from the simplest descriptive statistics to multidimensional approaches. It's written in an accessible way, with few calculations and fewer equations, for readers from a broad set of academic disciplines ranging from archaeology to zoology. There are numerous illustrative examples that guide the reader through:
Using Statistics is key reading for students who are looking for help with quantitative projects, but would like a qualitative introduction that takes them gently through the process. |
| About the authors |
Gordon Rugg is a former field archaeologist and English lecturer turned computer scientist, who is now head of the Knowledge Modelling Group at Keele University. His research includes software evaluation, mediaeval cryptography, the origins of handedness and training needs analysis for store detectives. He is co-author, with Marian Petre, of The Unwritten Rules of PhD Research (Open University Press, 2004) and A Gentle Guide to Research Methods (Open University Press, 2007). |
| Table of contents |
Introduction Some introductory concepts Descriptive statistics: a first encounter Measurement theory Descriptive statistics revisited Knowledge representation Beyond description : Answering 'so what?' questions, and the role of inferential statistics. Inferential statistics Probability theory and inferential statistics Parametric versus non-parametric statistics Non-parametric statistics Correlations Parametric statistics Bigger questions: multidimensional statistics Appendices, references and further reading |
