Название: The Joy of Stats: A Short Guide to Introductory Statistics in the Social Sciences, 3rd Edition
Автор: Roberta Garner, Michael Ash
Издательство: University of Toronto Press
Год: 2022
Страниц: 510
Язык: английский
Формат: pdf (true)
Размер: 22.4 MB

The Joy of Stats offers a reader-friendly introduction to applied statistics and quantitative analysis in the social sciences and public policy. Perfect as an undergraduate text or self-study manual, it emphasizes how to understand concepts, interpret algorithms and formulas, analyze data, and answer research questions.

This brand new edition offers examples and visualizations using real-life data, a revised discussion of statistical inference, and introductory examples in R and SPSS. The third edition has been extensively reorganized with shorter chapters and closer links between concepts and formulas, while retaining useful pedagogical features including key terms, practice exercises, a math refresher, and playful inserts on "the mathematical imagination." The Joy of Stats also places a strong emphasis on learning how to write and speak clearly about data results. Supported by a companion website with data sets and additional resources, The Joy of Stats is a superb choice for introducing students to applied statistics and for refreshing and reviewing stats as a social scientist, public policy professional, or community activist.

We will link the concepts and procedures of applied statistics to research questions, showing how statistics helps us understand and perhaps change the world around us. Statistics seems coldhearted because we appear to reduce experiences and injustices to numbers. Yet statistics can be part of a praxis of telling the truth about inequities and preventable suffering. We will look at rates and counts of infant mortality, maternal mortality, violent crime, and other terrible events, because understanding the numbers is a step in changing the world as well as interpreting it.

Statistics is not only a serious part of praxis; it also has a pleasurable side where fantasy enhances technique and the mathematical imagination takes us to strange places. It is believed that, in the left-brain, centers of math activity lie close to regions of joy and relaxation. So the association between statistics and pleasure, fun, curiosity, and relaxation is quite reasonable, even if it may seem a little surprising at first.