Statistical Methods For The Social Sciences (Agresi&Finlay)

Hey students,

If you find the book "Statistical Methods for the Social Scienes" of Agresi & Finlay (5th Edition) too long, too boring or what ever negative adjective you wanna add - at least take a look into the summaries (Dutch or English). Here you find the info you need to survive the lectures and hopefully the exams too!

 

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Summary of the Statistical Methods for the Social Sciences by Agresti - 5th edition

Summary of the Statistical Methods for the Social Sciences by Agresti - 5th edition

What are statistical methods? – Chapter 1

1.1 What is statistics and how can you learn it?

Statistics is used more and more often to study the behavior of people, not only by the social sciences but also by companies. Everyone can learn how to use statistics, even without much knowledge of mathematics and even with fear of statistics. Most important are logic thinking and perseverance.

To first step to using statistical methods is collecting data. Data are collected observations of characteristics of interest. For instance the opinion of 1000 people on whether marihuana should be allowed. Data can be obtained through questionnaires, experiments, observations or existing databases.

But statistics aren't only numbers obtained from data. A broader definition of statistics entails all methods to obtain and analyze data.

1.2 What is the difference between descriptive and inferential statistics?

Before being able to analyze data, a design is made on how to obtain the data. Next there are two sorts of statistical analyses; descriptive statistics and inferential statistics. Descriptive statistics summarizes the information obtained from a collection of data, so the data is easier to interpret. Inferential statistics makes predictions with the help of data. Which kind of statistics is used, depends on the goal of the research (summarize or predict).

To understand the differences better, a number of basic terms are important. The subjects are the entities that are observed in a research study, most often people but sometimes families, schools, cities etc. The population is the whole of subjects that you want to study (for instance foreign students). The sample is a limited number of selected subjects on which you will collect data (for instance 100 foreign students from several universities). The ultimate goal is to learn about the population, but because it's impossible to research the entire

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Statistics
1998