Statistics: An Introduction

Abstract

Master Teacher and writer Roger E. Kirk brings two clear goals to the Fifth Edition of STATISTICS: AN INTRODUCTION: to provide a sound introduction to descriptive and inferential statistics and to help students read and understand statistical presentations in their field. Kirk provides guidelines to help you decide when to use various procedures, and how to understand the logic of the procedures. This revision includes a complete update, focusing specifically on increased coverage of effect size and power. Benefits: NEW! Based on reviewer feedback, Kirk has significantly updated this edition, focusing specifically on increased coverage of effect size and power. Kirk covers descriptive and inferential statistics in depth. Other key topics covered include confidence intervals, visual approaches to understanding data such as box plots and confidence interval graphs, and procedures for detecting outliers. Powerful multiple comparison procedures and discussions of printouts from three popular microcomputer statistics packages (JMP, SPSS, and SYSTAT) expose students to these commonly used programs. Students will find that selecting an appropriate statistic is easier with the help of the Selection Guide for descriptive and inferential statistics on the front endpaper. The back endpaper provides a quick reference for important formulas. An extensive glossary of statistical symbols serves as an additional resource for students. The student database in Appendix E provides additional sources of exercises. The database enables students to gain experience drawing random samples and computing statistics using real data. NEW! Greater emphasis is given to visual approaches to aid in understanding data such as box plots and graphs of confidence intervals. NEW! Numerous examples interspersed throughout the text show the way statistical results are presented in scientific publications. NEW! Discussion of probability and selected advanced topi