First (and Second) Steps in Statistics
- Daniel B Wright - University of Nevada, Las Vegas, USA
- Kamala London - University of Toledo, USA
'This engagingly written and nicely opinionated book is a blend of friendly introduction and concisely applicable detail. No-one can recall every statistical formula, but if they have this book they will know where to look' - Professor Jon May, University of Plymouth
'This is one of the best books I have come across for teaching introductory statistics. The illustrative examples are engaging and often humorous and the explanations of 'difficult' concepts are written in a wonderfully clear and intuitive way' - Nick Allum, University of Essex
Selected as an Outstanding Academic Title by Choice Magazine, January 2010
First (and Second) Steps in Statistics, Second Edition provides a clear and concise introduction to the main statistical procedures used in the social and behavioural sciences and is perfect for the statistics student starting their journey.
The rationale and procedure for analyzing data are presented through exciting examples with an emphasis on understanding rather than computation. It is ideally suited for introductory courses in statistics given its gentle beginning, yet progressive treatment of topics. In addition to descriptive statistics, graphs, t-tests, oneway ANOVAs, Chi-square, and simple linear regression, this Second Edition now includes some new, more advanced topic areas as well as a host of additional examples to help students confidently progress through their studies and apply the techniques in lab work, reports and research projects.
Key features of this new edition:
- the reoganization of the first three chapters giving more attention to univariate statistics and providing more examples to work through at this level
- more advanced 'second step' content has been added on factorial ANOVA and multiple regression
- the robust methods chapter from the first edition is now spread throughout the book, and is linked with common teaching practices.
- many more examples have been added to enhance the book's practical potential.
- a host of exercises as well as further reading sections at the end of every chapter.
An accompanying Web page includes information for each chapter using the statistical packages SPSS and R.
Will be useful for when just satarting the process of the use of statistics. Also using 'The Tiger that isn't'
I trialled this with a few students and they often found the examples very useful - you get a strong sense that this is written by someone who actually does analysis (e.g. the section on pragmatic approaches to measurement).
Excellent simple approach to understanding statistics
The undergraduate students need a statistics book that talks to them and helps them understand the bigger picture not just numbers. This text will do that.
Great book
So what does 'and second' in the title of this new edition mean? What has changed so that
you should buy this new edition rather than search eBay for the original? There are three
areas where we focused. First, there is the general updating of some examples and adding
some new ones. We received feedback on which examples worked and which did not, and
made changes accordingly. We also go into a little more depth on some topics than in the
original edition. If these were the only changes then it would have just been a second edition
without the title change. We have two new steps. The chapter in the original edition
on robust methods has been taken and spread throughout the other chapters. This change
was due to many people writing and saying that they taught, for example, the Wilcoxon
tests in the same week as the t tests and therefore they wanted them in the same chapter.
We also added more tests based on the median because the median often gets discussed in
the initial chapters of textbooks, but then is not mentioned again. There are tests for the
median, and we wanted to include these. The second extra step is factorial ANOVA. Again,
this was in response to public demand (yes, people are demanding factorial ANOVA). This
is Chapter 9 in the current edition.
