Statistics for EMCL students

Overview before final exam

Topics

  1. Descriptive statistics (M&M 1.1 and 1.2, handout).
  2. More variables: independence, correlation, regression (M&M 2).
  3. Basics of inferential statistics: sampling distributions, confidence intervals, tests. Experiment design, ethical issues, etc. (M&M 3, 5.2, 6).
  4. Statistical procedures (tests and confidence interval): z-test and confidence interval (one-sample), t-test (one-sample and two-sample; confidence interval with t-statistic), test for proportions, chi-square, ANOVA, nonparametric tests (esp. Wilcoxon rank sum test).

Test yourself:

Can you define in one sentence the following concepts?

Formulas etc. that you need to know:

  1. How to compute: mean (a.k.a. average), median, mode, standard deviation, variance, IQR. Degree of freedom.
  2. Conversion to standard z-scores.
  3. Standard error for samples over n elements.
  4. Use of tables for z, t, chi-square.
  5. Interpret SPSS output for z, t, chi-square, ANOVA and Wilcoxon.

For all tests: pay attention to the guidelines for practical use! Be able to decide when is which test to be used (decision tree).

Type of questions in the test:

Further practice recommended before the final test:

Basic computations.

Paper-and-pen assignments that you should be able to solve during the final exam (by John Nerbonne):

Normal curve
Sample statistics
Confidence interval, statistical significance

You can expect very similar questions in the final test.


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