A friendly and accessible approach to applying statistics in
the real world
With an emphasis on critical thinking, The Art of Data
Analysis: How to Answer Almost Any Question Using Basic
Statistics presents fun and unique examples, guides readers
through the entire data collection and analysis process, and
introduces basic statistical concepts along the way.
Leaving proofs and complicated mathematics behind, the author
portrays the more engaging side of statistics and emphasizes its
role as a problem-solving tool. In addition, light-hearted
case studies illustrate the application of statistics to real data
analyses, highlighting the strengths and weaknesses of commonly
used techniques. Written for the growing academic and industrial
population that uses statistics in everyday life, The Art of
Data Analysis: How to Answer Almost Any Question Using Basic
Statistics highlights important issues that often arise when
collecting and sifting through data. Featured concepts include:
* Descriptive statistics
* Analysis of variance
* Probability and sample distributions
* Confidence intervals
* Hypothesis tests
* Regression
* Statistical correlation
* Data collection
* Statistical analysis with graphs
Fun and inviting from beginning to end, The Art of Data
Analysis is an ideal book for students as well as managers and
researchers in industry, medicine, or government who face
statistical questions and are in need of an intuitive understanding
of basic statistical reasoning.
İçerik tablosu
Preface ix
Part 1 The Basics
1. Statistics: The Life of the Party 3
2. Lions, and Tigers, and . . . Bigfoot? Oh, My: How Questionable Data Can Screw Up an Otherwise Perfectly Good Statistical Analysis 7
3. Asteroid Belts and Spandex Cars: Using Descriptive Statistics to Answer Your Most Weighty Questions 23
4. Baseball, Game Shows, and Sidekicks: Who Cares about Probability Anyway? 43
5. What It’s Like to Be Normal: Probability Distributions and One Rule That Could Make You Wildly Popular 63
Part 2 What a Few Estimates and a Little Probability Can Do for You
6. Men are Insensitive and Women are Illogical. Really: Asserting Your Stereotypes with Confidence 89
7. Godzilla versus King Kong: How Hypothesis Tests Can Be Used to Settle the Battle of the Movie Monsters 109
8. Lab Rats and Roommates: Analysis of Variance and How to Channel Your Inner Mad Scientist 129
9. When the Zombie Flu Went Viral: Regressing the Myth Out of Urban Myths 143
Appendix A: Critical Values for the Standard Normal Distribution 161
Appendix B: Critical Values for the T-Distribution 163
Appendix C: Critical Values for the Chi-Squared Distribution 165
Glossary 167
References 173
Index 175
Yazar hakkında
KRISTIN H. JARMAN, Ph D, is Senior Research Scientist at
the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Richland, Washington,
where she applies basic and not-so-basic statistical analyses to
her own set of research challenges.