Statistical Methods for the Social Sciences

by Agresti, Alan; Finlay, Barbara

• ISBN13: 9780205646418
• ISBN10: 0205646417
• Edition: 4th
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2008-04-01
• Publisher: Pearson

Summary

Assuming no prior knowledge of statistics, these authors combine their varied backgroundsone a statistician, the other a social scientistto introduce statistical methods with a high degree of statistical accuracy and a wealth of examples that are interesting and relevant to social scientists.The FourthEdition has been both updated and improved to integrate real-world data into examples and exercises, and make coverage more accessible throughout.

Table of Contents

Introduction

Introduction to statistical methodology

Descriptive statistics and inferential statistics

The role of computers in statistics

Chapter summary

Sampling and Measurement

Variables and their measurement

Randomization

Sampling variability and potential bias

other probability sampling methods

Chapter summary

Descriptive statistics

Describing data with tables and graphs

Describing the center of the data

Describing variability of the data

Measure of position

Bivariate descriptive statistics

Sample statistics and population parameters

Chapter summary

Probability Distributions

Introduction to probability

Probablitity distributions for discrete and continuous variables

The normal probability distribution

Sampling distributions describe how statistics vary

Sampling distributions of sample means

Review: Probability, sample data, and sampling distributions

Chapter summary

Statistical inference: estimation

Point and interval estimation

Confidence interval for a proportion

Confidence interval for a mean

Choice of sample size

Confidence intervals for median and other parameters

Chapter summary

Statistical Inference: Significance Tests

Steps of a significance test

Significance test for a eman

Significance test for a proportion

Decisions and types of errors in tests

Limitations of significance tests

Calculating P (Type II error)

Small-sample test for a proportion: the binomial distribution

Chapter summary

Comparison of Two Groups

Preliminaries for comparing groups

Categorical data: comparing two proportions

Quantitative data: comparing two means

Comp

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