Main Page

Practical Statistics for Educators edited and maintained by Frank LaBanca, EdD

---

Philosophy

Quantitative statistical analyses can be intimidating for many educators pursing an advanced academic degree. The thought of computational math can sometimes trigger unwarranted fears. Quantitative research in education and other fields of inquiry is expressed in numbers and measurements. This type of research aims to find data to confirm or test a hypothesis. Quantitative study requires extensive statistical analysis, which can be difficult to perform for researchers from non- statistical backgrounds. Statistical analysis is based on scientific discipline and hence difficult for non-mathematicians to perform. But once one begins to embark on understanding all of the representations, descriptions, and analyses of particular data sets, statistics becomes an educator’s friend not foe.

Here, we approach statistics from a straightforward conceptually-based perspective. Our goal is to collaborate and provide insight for statistics that make them meaningful tools in the educational arena.

Each "module" corresponds with the topics presented each week, and will expand as the course progresses. A topical outline can be found @ [1]

Comments and edits are welcome and encouraged! Please give yourself credit as you contribute. At the end of a section you insert please add the following in italics: contributed by <your name> If you are modifying content, add the following under the contribution line: modified by <your name> We are glad to accept as many modifications as necessary to give the most meaning to each section. As we asynchronously socially construct knowledge together, we can recognize the accomplishments and contributions of each writer.

contributed by Frank LaBanca, EdD, modified by Jennifer Blue

Contributions

Our contributors contributions here.

Please submit your contribution at [2]

Modules

1.1 The Greek Alphabet and its significance in statistics

1.2 An introduction to probability PowerPoint @[3]

1.3 Some Probability Formulas

2.1 Types of Data

2.2 Visualizing Data

2.3 Visually representing data PowerPoint @ [4]

2.3.1 Table 2 from LaBanca dissertation @ [5]

2.3.2 Cool graph of movie box office from NY Times [6]

2.3.4 Histograms

2.3.5 Scatterplots YouTube @ [7]

2.4 Shapes of distribution

2.5 Survey of Attitudes Toward Statistics (SATS) Data Set @ [8]

2.6 Data Screening

2.7 Statistics Decision Tree Example

2.8 Understanding Skewness

3.1 Central Tendency

3.1.1 Central Tendency and Normal Distribution PowerPoint @ [9]

3.1.2 Central Tendency YouTube @ [10]

3.2 Interquartile ranges

3.2.1 The Box Plot

3.2.2 Interpreting a Box Plot - video [11]

3.3 Standard deviation

3.3.1 Identifying percentile ranks and scores based on standard deviation

3.3.1.a Practice Identifying percentile ranks and scores based on standard deviation

3.4 z-scores

3.5 Empirical Rule

4.1 Percentile Rank 4.1.1 Areas under the standard normal curve for z values @ [12]

4.1.2 z scores corresponding to divisions of the area under the normal curve @ [13]

4.2 Conversion of data PowerPoint @ [14]

4.2.1 Descriptive analysis of USRT data @ [15]

4.3 Normal Curve Equivalent scores

4.3 Standard Error of Measurement

4.4 Confidence Intervals

4.4 z score machine @ [16]

5.1 Pearson r

5.2 Rules of thumb for interpreting the size of a correlation coefficient

5.3 Critical values for the correlation coefficient @ [17]

5.4 Spearman rho

5.5 Correlation PowerPoint @ [18]

5.6 Writing samples for correlations

5.7 Scatter Plots

6.1 Inferential Statistics Definition

6.2 Sampling

6.3 Sampling distributions

6.4 t test PowerPoint @ [19]

6.4.1 t -t test video [20]

6.4.2 t-test - What is a t-test?

6.5 Sample data set @ [21]

6.6 Critical values for t @ [22]

6.7 Helpful Tutorial for Running a t-Test in Excel @ [23]

7.1 Effect size

7.1.1 Effect size calculator @ http://www.campbellcollaboration.org/resources/effect_size_input.php

7.1.2 Rules of thumb for interpreting effect sizes

7.2 Effect size PowerPoint @ [24]

7.3 Hypothesis testing

7.4 Hypothesis testing PowerPoint @ [25]

7.5.1 Hypothesis testing template for a correlation @ [26]

7.5.2 Hypothesis testing template for a t test @ [27]

8.1 Type I and Type II Errors

8.2 Type I and Type II Errors PowerPoint @ [28]

8.3 Levene's p versus the test statistic p

8.4 Analysis of Variance

8.5 ANOVA PowerPoint @ [29]

8.6 ANOVA Case study

8.7 ANOVA video [30]

8.8 Critical values for the F statistic @ [31]

8.9 Rules of thumb for interpreting effect sizes of ANOVAs

9.1 Post Hoc test PowerPoint @ [32]

9.2 Selecting a Post Hoc test

9.3 Hypothesis testing template for ANOVA @ [33]

10.1 Chi square

10.1.1 Chi square video [34]

10.2 Example for calculating chi square

10.3 Critical values for chi square @ [35]

10.4 Chi square analysis description/sample writing

10.5 Chi square PowerPoint @ [36]

10.6 Chi Square goodness of fit example

11.1 Beyond the ANOVA

11.2 Beyond ANOVA PowerPoint @ [37]

11.3 2-way ANOVA PowerPoint @ [38]

11.4 2-way ANOVA template @ [39]

11.5 1-way ANOVA Annotated SPSS Output @ [40]

11.6 2-way ANOVA Annotated SPSS Output @ [41]

11.7 What is an ANOVA @ [42]

12.1 MANOVA

12.2 Homogeneity vs Homoscedacity (Levene vs Box's M)

12.3 Post Hoc ANOVAs for MANOVA (univariate)

12.4 Post Hoc Discriminant Analysis (multivariate)

12.5 Covariates

12.6 MANCOVA

12.7 MANOVA Annotated SPSS Output @ [43]

12.8 MANCOVA Annotated SPSS Output @ [44]

13.1 Multiple Regression Analysis

13.1.1 Collinearity

13.2 Multiple Linear Regression

13.3 Reading the MLR Output: An annotated output [45]

13.4 MLR Annotated SPSS Output @ [46]

14.1 Internal Consistency Reliability[47]

14.1.1 Internal Consistency Reliability

14.2 Cronbach's Alpha[48]

14.2.1 Cronbach's Alpha Values

14.2.2 Cronbach's Alpha in SPSS [49]

Applied Research Designs

15.1 Instrumentation

15.2 Limitations

15.3 Practice determining the stat

Getting started

• Configuration settings list
• MediaWiki FAQ
• MediaWiki release mailing list