Education 160

Introduction to Statistical Methods in Education

Fall Quarter, 2009

Course Text

Welkowitz, J., Cohen, B. & Ewen, R. Introductory Statistics for the Behavioral Sciences. 6th Edition. John Wiley & Sons..

Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS)..

Course Description

The primary objective of the course is to introduce you to the major basic concepts in descriptive and inferential statistics, and to prepare you for subsequent statistical courses in multivariate statistics and beyond. (If you do not intend on taking subsequent statistics courses, you should register for Education 150.) This course begins with methods to describe and summarize frequency distributions. This is followed by various methods to describe the relationships between two variables. Finally, we provide an introduction to probability theory methods to draw inferences about the relationship between samples used in studies to the universe from which the samples were drawn. You will also be introduced to a statistical software program, SPSS. The course is meant to be informative and fun (yes, fun!), and we guarantee everyone that after this course, you will want to know more, and that the world of statistical thinking will never seem the same.

Homework exercises. Most weeks, you will be given problems posted on this website to complete. We very much encourage you to do these problems in groups so that you can have a chance to discuss them and pose questions. You should come to the discussion section, generally held on Fridays (with some scheduling exceptions, see syllabus), with your answers. The sections will discuss the problems and answers, and you may annotate your homework answer during the sections, at the end of which you will be asked to hand them in. Each homework will be graded as pass/no pass, but the primary intent of the homework is to assess your on-going learning and to guide our own instructional efforts. So, on your homework sheets, please feel free to include questions and comments that can help us teach you better.

Exams. There will be two take-home exams during the course, with problems similar to those found in the homework problems. These exams are under the honor code. Students may not discuss the problems with others until the problems have been turned in.

Grading. Since this is a prerequisite course for the statistics sequence, the intent is to enable all students who put in the effort to pass. The course will be graded pass/no pass. Homework assisngment and exams will be graded in such a way as to give feedback on your command of the materials. Instructors are committed to alerting students who are in trouble, and to suggest corrective steps.