Chapter 1 Introduction

This is not a statistics textbook.

You will find information about statistics here, but these chapters are not meant to be primary instructional material for statistical methods. You can think of these chapters more as a handbook for basic data analysis. My goal is to bring you with me through the data analysis process, using real data from psychological experiments. I assume readers 1) have a basic familiarity with statistics, 2) access to and basic familiarity with some form of statistical software, and 3) motivation to work through the examples, checking against the results I obtained.

The first few chapters are about basic principles in data analysis, with a bit of necessary statistical theory (principles of uncertainty and classical statistical inference). The middle later chapters focus on data sets chosen to represent different designs. The later chapters provide some textbook-like background about specific topics that periodically arise.

I’ve implemented a few features to increase the interactive nature of the handbook. First, within the chapters you’ll find invitations to answer specific questions, with the answer hidden. Click on the box to expand the answer.

❗ What is the average of 2 and 4? When you see this, it means a solution is hidden. You can click here to reveal, but don’t reveal it until you’ve tried to answer the question!

The average of a set of numbers is their sum \((\sum x_i)\) divided the how many numbers there are (\(N\)). There are two numbers, so \(N=2\).

The average of 2 and 4 is: \[ \begin{eqnarray} \frac{\sum x_i}{N} &=& \frac{2 + 4}{2}\\ &=&\frac{6}{2}\\ &=&3. \end{eqnarray} \]

You can click the top of the box to hide it, if you like.

You can also click most of the figures in the chapters to get less-cluttered, zoom-able look at them.