PSY53: Introduction to Psychological Statistics

PSY53: Introduction to Psychological Statistics
Spring 2009
Tuesday and Thursday, 9:30-12
Office hours Tues and Thurs 12-1 and by appointment, LS152-C
Nancy.Frye@liu.edu

Overview Book and resources Notes Calendar Grades

New: The final exam schedule is out. Our final will be in LS16 (our usual room) on Thursday, April 30 at 8am

Overview
The goal of this course is for you to gain a general understanding of statistics, and how they relate to psychology. By the end of this course, you should understand:

The general logic of hypothesis testing

How to select which statistic to use to test a particular hypothesis

How to conduct a variety of statistics

How to interpret the results of a variety of statistics

Why psychologists care about statistics

Book and Resources
The book for this course is:
Gravetter, F.J., & Wallnau, L.B. (2008). Essentials of statistics for the behavioral sciences. (Sixth Edition). US: Thomson Wadsworth.

In addition to this book you may want to refer to some helpful webpages throughout the course:

Notes
You can find the PowerPoint slides that will be used in this class at this site. It is recommended that you print out these notes and bring them with you to class; you can then take additional notes throughout class. Note that viewing these notes is not a substitute for attending class.

Calendar
This class will meet every Tuesday and Thursday except:

Thurs, Feb 5
Tues, Feb 17
Tues, March 10
Thurs, March 12
Thurs, April 9

We will be covering the chapters in Gravetter & Wallnau in the following order:

Chapter 1: Introduction to statistics
Chapter 2: Frequency distributions
Chapter 3: Central tendency
Chapter 4: Variability
Chapter 5: z-scores
Chapter 6: Probability
Chapter 7: Probability and samples
Chapter 8: Introduction to hypothesis testing
Chapter 9: Introduction to the t statistic
Chapter 10: The t test for two independent samples
Chapter 11: The t test for two related samples
Chapter 16: The Chi square statistic
Chapter 15: Correlation and regression
Chapter 13: Introduction to analysis of variance
Chapter 14: Repeated measures and two-factor analysis of variance
Chapter 12: Estimation

As soon as we finish one chapter, we will begin the next chapter that will be covered. It is expected that you will read chapters before they are covered in class.

Grades
Grades will be based on weekly quizzes. Each of these quizzes is worth 10 points. Quizzes will be given each Tues, except for Tues, Jan 20. There will be 13 quizzes throughout the semester. Your three lowest quiz grades will be dropped. No make-up quizzes will be given. If you miss a quiz for any reason, you will earn a 0 on that quiz. Note that the last quiz (given during finals week) cannot be one of the quizzes that you drop.

If you have given me a 4-digit id, you can find out your grade by clicking here. If you have not given me a 4-digit id, but would like to do so, please email me with your name, which class this is for, and the 4-digit id you would like to have.