Statistical Methods for Research Workers - 2011

In many disciplines researchers wishing to publish are asked to provide a statistical analysis. Reviewers are often specific about what statistical measures they want included. Why wasn't an ANOVA done? What is the power of the test?

Researchers may have a statistical package available to them. How does one decide which is the appropriate procedure? What do all the pages of printout mean? In this course we use R,

This course is designed as an overview of statistical design and analysis for researchers. Emphasis is on understanding the concepts of statistical procedures (with an absolute minimum of mathematics) and on interpreting computer output. This course is designed to help you, the researcher. It assumes you did an undergraduate statistics subject which you have completely forgotten.

The emphasis in this course is on interpreting the data on computer printouts, and most packages produce similar printout. Relevant websites that provide online statistical calculations will also be given. There will be computing lab sessions throughout the course.

Course outline

• List of Statistical Techniques covered

Introduction

Types of experiments, scales of measurement, which method to use.

Summarising and Graphing Data

Ways of presenting data (histograms, boxplots), measures of centre and spread, analysing tables, correlation, confidence intervals.

Comparing Groups

Hypothesis testing concepts - power, significance, P-value. Comparing two groups (t-tests, Wilcoxon). Comparing many groups - ANOVA or Kruskal-Wallis - multiple comparison tests, required sample size and repeated measures.

Finding Relationships

Correlation, predicting relationships (regression - simple).

Certificates of attendance will be presented to participants.

Contact: Francy Fan or Julie Hebblewhite
School of Mathematics and Statistics, UNSW
Email: f.fan@unsw.edu.au or j.hebblewhite@unsw.edu.au
Fax: 9385 7123 Phone: 9385 7053

Course Time: 9.30am-5.00pm Thursday and Friday
Commencing: 8th and 9th September 2011
Duration: 2 days
Cost: $495 (GST inclusive) for UNSW staff and students; $600 (GST inclusive) for others.

ENROLMENT FORM

Enrolment form (PDF).