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Statistics for the Behavioral Sciences

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Interactive Statistics for the Behavioral Sciences

Pepper Williams

2004
CD and Text

About This Title

Interactive Statistics for the Behavioral Sciences is an engaging tour of the topics covered in most behavioral science statistics textbooks: descriptive statistics, the logic of hypothesis testing, t tests, power analysis, confidence intervals, analysis of variance, correlation/regression, and nonparametric inferential statistics. Yet, it employs a radically different pedagogical approach. Without wholly abandoning the tradition of using a printed textbook to supplement classroom or online instruction, this system has at its core an interactive set of components that run through Web browsers such as Internet Explorer or Netscape Navigator. Working through these components, students create their own customized learning experience, rather than passively reading a printed text. The end result is students who can better master—and perhaps even enjoy—a subject that many approach with trepidation.

Online Demo

For a full demonstration of the features of this learning system, view the online self-running tour.

System Components

The CD contains the text, with in-text queries, interactive activities and figures, calculation tools, and review exercises. This allows local access to the system for those times when working online proves slow or unreliable.

The Website, www.introstats.net, includes everything above, plus many more online features. For more details regarding online features, see "Features of the Interactive Text," below. Purchasers of this textbook will have access to the online component for 180 days from their first login. Go to http://www.introstats.net for sample chapters.

The Printed Textbook includes the full text, formulas, all figures, and statistical tables. It allows for reading and/or review while away from the computer, and provides students with a comfort zone as they become familiar with the online features.

Apart from providing a more enjoyable experience for students, Interactive Statistics for the Behavioral Sciences offers benefits for the computer-savvy instructor. First, the text is customizable via the "Note" feature: here instructors can add notes to any page as well as links to graphics or Websites of interest; their students see these notes whenever they are reading the text online. As students progress through the chapters, instructors can assign specific problems to assess their progress. When students submit their answers, the server checks them and stores graded answers. Instructors can then view the answers in their own Web browsers, assign a grade, and generate an e-mail response. This saves class and grading time (not to mention trees).

Features of the Interactive Text

→ Presentation of the text via Web browser enhances concept comprehension as students work through the chapters, taking full advantage of these media with features such as: animated and interactive figures; short queries that appear every few pages to keep students thinking and get them involved while reading; and hyperlinks allowing for quick access to any point in the text. (The text can be accessed either via the World Wide Web or via a provided CD, so students do not need a fast Internet connection to be able to take advantage of these features.)

→ Interactive Calculation Tools are designed to take the tedium out of statistical computation while still requiring students to think through their calculations. For example, three separate tools are needed to conduct a t test: one to calculate the mean and standard deviation, a second to calculate the t statistic, and a third to look up the probability value associated with the computed t and associated degrees of freedom.

→ Chapter Summary questions and Review Exercises reinforce the concepts and calculations covered in each chapter. Unlike the problem sets in printed texts, these exercises give students instant feedback on their answers; if wrong, the system allows the opportunity for correction. Since there are no space limitations, a detailed answer to each problem is provided, accessible with a click of the mouse (versus terse explanations in tiny text squeezed into the appendices of printed textbooks). Best of all, many review exercises are "regenerative," meaning that students can practice them again and again with a different set of numbers each time.

→ Activities explicate tricky and/or important concepts and calculations, such as the standard deviation, the normal distribution, the central limit theorem, and ANOVA. Links to these Activities appear at appropriate points throughout the text.

→ Additional features include: the ability to highlight sentences in the text; the ability for professors and students to customize the text by adding their own notes to any page; the ability to bookmark any page in the text; a text search function; and a full-featured Desktop Calculator right in the window.

Please contact Linda VandenDolder (vandendolder@sinauer.com) if you'd like to consider Interactive Statistics for the Behavioral Sciences for your course.

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About the Author(s)

Pepper Williams has collaborated with Sinauer Associates over the last several years, designing, writing, and producing interactive instructional media—tasks to which his background is well-suited. While earning a B.A. in Psychology (concentrating in Cognitive Science) at Stanford University, he completed elective coursework in such diverse subject areas as computer science, electrical engineering, linguistics, philosophy, and history. He then completed a Ph.D. degree in Cognitive Psychology at Yale University, where his research explored memory for and perception of visual stimuli. As Assistant Professor in the Psychology Department at the University of Massachusetts, Boston, Dr. Williams taught courses in cognitive psychology and statistics; this past spring, he taught a perception course at Portland State University. For each of these, custom-designed, interactive Web pages played an integral part.

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Reviews and Commentary

"I like the author's student-friendly writing style. I am impressed by this online stats book. To be honest, I was very skeptical about it, but after spending some time with it, I think it has a good possibility of catching on and being used widely. I know that I would be willing to use it. Its strengths are really in the interactive exercises and the immediate feedback that the student will receive, immediate access to definitions of terms and the ability to jump around from one section to the next very easily. The calculation helpers are impressive; the author has done a very good job in preparing these and I think the students will like them. I know I did."
—Joseph H. Porter, Virginia Commonwealth University

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Table of Contents

1. Introduction to Statistics

2. Looking at Data: Frequency Distributions

3. Describing Data: Measuring Center and Spread

4. Preparing To Test Hypotheses

5. From Samples to Populations: Hypothesis Testing with z

6. Practical Hypothesis Testing with t

7. Making and Avoiding Hypothesis Test Errors

8. t Tests for Two Means

9. Confidence Intervals

10. Inference for Three or More Means: Analysis of Variance (ANOVA)

11. Describing Relationships: Correlation and Regression

12. Inference for Categorical Data: Chi-Square Tests

CALCULATION TOOLS

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Media and Supplements

Instructor's Resource CD & Test Bank (ISBN 0-87893-931-8)

(Test Bank by Will Hayward, Chinese University of Hong Kong)

Available to qualified adopters free of charge, this cross-platform (Macintosh/Windows) resource includes all of the figures from the text in both JPEG and PowerPoint formats, and the Test Bank in Microsoft Word format.

View a sample PowerPoint presentation from the Instructor's Resource CD.

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To Purchase Website Access Only

Please visit our Kagi store.

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Pricing and Options

TitlesProduct CodePrice (USD)  
Interactive Statistics for the Behavioral Sciences - Website Access Only- Online purchase via Kagi.
 0-87893-929-6 $49.00    
Interactive Statistics for the Behavioral Sciences
 978-0-87893-930-5 $81.95 Purchase Request Exam Copy
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