Statistics in Plain English

by Timothy C. Urdan

This introductory textbook provides an inexpensive, brief 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. Using the author s own data and examples from published research and the popular media, the book is a straightforward and accessible guide to statistics.

New features in the fourth edition include:



sets of work problems in each chapter with detailed solutions and additional problems online to help students test their understanding of the material,

new ""Work Examples"" to walk students through how to calculate and interpret the statistics featured in each chapter,

new examples from the author s own data and from published research and the popular media to help students see how statistics are applied and written about in professional publications,

many more examples, tables, and charts to help students visualize key concepts, clarify concepts, and demonstrate how the statistics are used in the real world.

a more logical flow, with correlation directly preceding regression, and a combined glossary appearing at the end of the book,

a Quick Guide to Statistics, Formulas, and Degrees of Freedom at the start of the book, plainly outlining each statistic and when students should use them,

greater emphasis on (and description of) effect size and confidence interval reporting, reflecting their growing importance in research across the social science disciplines

an expanded website at www.routledge.com/cw/urdan with PowerPoint presentations, chapter summaries, a new test bank, interactive problems and detailed solutions to the text s work problems, chapter summaries, SPSS datasets for practice, links to useful tools and resources, and videos showing how to calculate statistics, how to calculate and interpret the appendices, and how to understand some of the more confusing tables of output produced by SPSS.

"

Statistics in Plain English, Fourth Edition" is an ideal guide 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. "

Genres: Mathematics, Science, Education, Nonfiction, Textbooks, Business, Reference

286 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2001

Reviews

[Jim · Rating 2 out of 5]

Some clear explanations of statistical techniques, but in general will not help people learn to use statistics very much.

[Tena Edlin · Rating 3 out of 5]

I can’t say I LIKED this book… it’s not like it made me want to run out and read more about statistics. But, it was very useful and way more user-friendly than our other textbook, which honestly isn’t saying much.

[Ton Chawannut · Rating 5 out of 5]

[English below]
บทแรกจนถึงANOVA, ANCOVA คนเขียนอธิบายได้เห็นภาพมากโดยการใช้ประโยคหลายแบบที่มีใจความเดียวกันเพื่อสื่อถึงประเด็นหลักจากหลายๆมุม และตัวอย่างที่ยกมาก็เข้าใจง่าย มีบางสูตรที่ละที่มาของสูตรออกไปซึ่งไม่กระทบต่อการเอาสูตรนั้นไปใช้งานจริง เหมาะเป็นหนังสือใช้ปูพื้นฐานสถิติสำหรับป.ตรี

Excellent explanation. Writer paraphrases each main idea to make sure readers can actually understand it. Also provide clear examples in a step by step manner. A few formulas aren't clearly derived but this doesn't affect the practical use of those formulas. Excellent book for laying a basic foundation towards studying of Statistics for the bachelor's degree level.

[Bri Altier · Rating 3 out of 5]

The author explains concepts very well, but there are an unforgivable amount of calculation errors in the examples. At the very least, these errors could be pointed out and accounted for in the companion website to spare the reader undo confusion.

[Katja · Rating 3 out of 5]

The book does a good job explaining some basic concepts. I feel that some explanations end too quickly, which confuses the reader even more.
Lacks a lot of explanation on factor analysis and latent class analysis.

[Shelly (YI-Hsuan) LIN · Rating 5 out of 5]

An excellent book to explain many essential concepts in statistics with easy to understand examples.

[João Fernandes · Rating 5 out of 5]

Still reading this one. Very impressed with it up until know. Covers the "why"s and not the "how"s. The title doesn't deceive.

[Scott · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very helpful for someone relatively new to Statistics; I'm going to have to revisit a lot of this over the next two years.

[Spencer Kimber · Rating 4 out of 5]

I wish I just read this instead of the 3 statistics classes I took in highschool and undergrad.

[Arun Mahendrakar · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a great primer for Statistics. Compliments to the author on the simplified way of teaching and the illustrative examples provided throughout the book. The book starts with the very basics and goes all the way to super-advanced concepts like ANOVA, Regression, and data reduction techniques. Unless someone has an in-depth understanding on the subject, it's pretty difficult to achieve that in less than 250 pages.

Gladly, this is not a typical textbook of Statistics with a definition-formula-problems template. This book helps you understand Statistics in a very intuitive manner. The topics explained here will absolutely form the foundation for any further areas of research like Data Science and other analytics techniques.

[Pankaj Gupta · Rating 5 out of 5]

The beauty of this book is the simplicity of writing. It explains simple statistical concepts in simple plain English with sufficient examples. For me, I always had inertia to study statistics and this book was like an ice-breaker.

However, the breadth covered in the book is quite limited. The topics it covers in detail are z-test, t-test, standard error, confidence interval, one-way ANOVA. While topics like linear regression, chi-square test, factorial analysis are touched from the surface. That does justifies author's purpose of writing the book i.e. cover basic topics in depth while just touch upon advanced topics.

Having said that, this is an excellent book for an intro to field of statistics. Highly recommended.

[Peter Farness · Rating 4 out of 5]

I think this is a helpful study guide. He presents and summarizes a lot of key concepts in a bang-bang way. A lot of the examples for the author's own research surveys into educational psychology, the affect or motivation of grade school children, were a little underwhelming. (It seemed like he was asking all the questions except for the questions that he needed to ask, and that's unfortunately typical, not unique to him.) There were also a few typos here and there, especially involving the math itself, but not too many.

[Dennis · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a good refresher and a well-written book with a lot of examples. The only exception is chapter 11 (repeated-measures analysis of variance), which, in my opinion, requires some editing: the explanation on the components of the total variance is very muddled; and, how they relate to MST (mean square for the difference between the trials) and MSsxt (the mean square for the subject by trial interaction) needs further clarification.

[Garrett · Rating 4 out of 5]

Urdan's book is exactly what he says it is - an excellent primer and supplement to more comprehensive and, perhaps, more baffling statistical texts. It's always good to see methods taught from different perspectives, and also refresh my understanding of basic methods I never, ever use. Specifically, ANOVA, ANCOVA and their ilk.

[Paulo Saraiva · Rating 5 out of 5]

Uma das melhores experiências literárias da minha vida. Pra quem não se contenta em ler números e busca entender o que existe por trás deles. Estatística, probabilidade e suas aplicações explicadas de forma cristalina. Não indicado pra quem é totalmente iniciante no assunto, se não houver nenhuma afinidade com matemática, sugere-se ler um livro introdutório antes.

[Jun · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fair book, but it's a better source of information for frequentist statistics, rather than Bayesian. This is likely to be more helpful for the novice learner whose primary field lies external to statistics.

[Dustin Dye · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good companion to a more methodical approach to statistics.

[Rachel · Rating 3 out of 5]

I feel so accomplished having read this ENTIRE book, cover to cover! Statistics does not come naturally to me, so each chapter was a challenge. I am so happy to be DONE!

[Jimmy Chavedo · Rating 3 out of 5]

I may be a simpleton, but if that was statistics in plain English I would hate to read any other statistics book.

[Krisma · Rating 5 out of 5]

I wish I knew this book when I was in college!

[Emperador Spock · Rating 5 out of 5]

In the preface the author notes that the book was designed to be complementary to normal (and presumably less beginner-frendly) statistics textbooks and to help people with some knowledge in statistics to refresh their memories.

In my case, with my having taken a basic and rather cursory and shallow statistics course some time in the past, and really needing some statistics knowledge for actual work, the book has been of immense help, as it provides thorough and accesible explanations for most of the concepts it covers, almost flooding the reader with detailed and real(istic) examples of their use.

I particularly liked the 'Writing It Up' and 'Glossary of Terms' sections at the end of each chapter, which give clues on how to present the data associated with the concepts explained in academic writing and remind the reader of the relevant jargon, respectively.

My only complain is that in the later chapters that describe more complex tecniques (Factorial ANOVA and onwards) the book loses depth and provides much briefer explanations than necessary, even though this is compensated to some extent by the author's explicitly saying that the descriptions are far from exhaustive and referring to books that do explain the topics in question in depth.

[Arafat Rahman · Rating 4 out of 5]

বিশ্ববিদ্যালয়ের প্রথম ও দ্বিতীয় বর্ষে পরিসংখ্যান পাঠ্যহিসেবে থাকলেও তা মাথার ভেতর খুব একটা ঢুকতে পারে নি। একাডেমিকভাবে পরিসংখ্যানের ক্লাসগুলো ছিলো গণিত-ভিত্তিক, সূত্র আছে অংক করো এই ধরনের। গণিত দরকারী জিনিস, কোন ধারণাকে বিমূর্তভাবে উপস্থাপনের জন্য অপরিহার্য। তবে পরিসংখ্যানের আলোচ্য বিষয়গুলো আসলে কোন প্রেক্ষিতে কি দরকারে এসেছে, প্রতিটি বিষয়ের গণিতের পেছনে ভাবনাটা আসলে কি এই অন্তর্দৃষ্টি তৈরি না হলে আলোচনাগুলো অর্থহীন হয়ে পড়ে। তখন শুধু সূত্র শিখে অংক কষাই হয়, পরিসংখ্যানের কোন বোধ তৈরি হয় না। পরিসংখ্যান না বোঝার কারণে পরবর্তীতে থিসিস করতে গিয়ে কিংবা কোন বৈজ্ঞানিক নিবন্ধ পড়তে গিয়ে ঠেকে যেতে হয়েছে। এরকম অবস্থায় স্ট্যাটিস্টিকস ইন প্লেইন ইংলিশ বইটা হাতে আসে। এখানে লেখক পরিসংখ্যানকে গাণিতিকভাবে উপস্থাপনের চেয়ে কোন বিশ্লেষণ পদ্ধতি কোন প্রয়োজনে এসেছে, পদ্ধতিটার মানে কি দাঁড়ায়, বিশ্লেষণের পেছনে অন্তর্দৃষ্টিটা কি এই বিষয়গুলোতে বিস্তারিত আলোচনা করেছেন -- সোজা বাংলায় (মানে ভাষাটা ইংরেজী হলেও আলোচনাটা সরল ভাষায়)। এই বইটা পড়ার পর পরিসংখ্যানের অনেকগুলো গুরুত্বপূর্ণ আর প্রাথমিক বিশ্লেষণ পদ্ধতির ধারণা পরিস্কার হয়েছে আমার। পরিসংখ্যানের আরেকটু সিরিয়াস বুঝ্ তৈরি করতে এই বোধ্-টা কাজে দেবে।

[Sebastian Gebski · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was looking for a simple textbook to refresh statistics' basics & I've pretty much received what I wanted.
Author is very patient & his descriptions are careful & well prepared - to make sure no-one gets lost. It works quite well, but honestly - I think he could cut at least 25% of the text, but provide more images instead. No complaints about examples - they are quite decent.

Solid 3 stars.

[Jennifer · Rating 4 out of 5]

Although this book is pretty big and looks really hard to handle, its content is very useful for people who have to understand about research's methods and analytical skills. Good examples. Very well explained.

[for-much-deliberation ...]

... seems quite an interesting text to get a grip on basic statistical principles...

[Kate · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very good, very clear statistics book.

[Alon Gutman · Rating 3 out of 5]

I wanted to learn the basic of statistics, and it was a good book for that, pretty much clear and concise.

[Rebecca · Rating 4 out of 5]

Even though I still don't like statistics, this book makes it easy to understand.

[Sarah · Rating 3 out of 5]

Genuinely helpful and clear!

[Leland William · Rating 4 out of 5]

An excellent companion to anyone who wants a conceptual understanding of basic statistics. Adding this to my reference collection.