Week 12, Inferential Statistics:
t-tests & correlations.
Lecture notes
Key topics:
- Plato's Cave and the approximation of reality by science.
- Deductive v. Inductive reasoning and link between theory / hypothetical constructs & data.
- Sampling distribution, M of the sampling distribution
- Z, t, critical ratio, statistical significance.
- The Central Limit Theorem and sampling distributions.
- Correlations and assessing shared variance.
- Alpha (α), critical value.
- Type I error, Type II error.
This week we will discuss the t-test and correlation coefficient. Along the way we will learn a set of basic statistical concepts, some of which are cited in italics here.
Lecture notes: Statistics notes # 2
Readings
Chapter 5 (further statistics) and readings on interpreting “relative risk” statistics.
Discussion Group
Calculate a t-test, begin writing your Research Paper results section.
Compute a t-ratio by hand, and answer some questions about it. The assignment is given in a Word document here.
By now, you have written your introduction and overall research design. Now take one of the two data sets we have made up (or use your own) and analyze it to test your hypothesis. Each data represents 10 participants in each of the experimental and control groups.
For next week you will complete your results section, so begin working on that now; look at the paper assignment for guidance. For this week, imagine you are testing the effect of self-confidence training (Independent Variable) on Fear and Loathing of Statistics (D.V.). The experimental group got statistical self-confidence training before class, while the control group got a “placebo” condition that had nothing to do with self-confidence. The hypothesis is that participants who got the self-confidence training will show less Fear and Loathing of Statistics than students who got class as usual.
