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Psychology 200 - Statistics
Overview
Daily in the media we are bombarded with data from 'scientific' studies that make claims about everything from your love lives to cancer-preventing powers of vegetables. How can one differentiate between facts and figures that are trustworthy and those that are not? The study of statistics provides one with just those tools needed to be able to evaluate whether the claims being made are worth considering. This course is designed to introduce the psychology major to the theory and techniques of data analysis. But besides this, the subject matter of this course more generally trains the students to be able to argue from data to conclusion, and hence, provides them with thinking skills they will be able to use throughout their lives. The course topics are descriptive statistics (with an emphasis on graphing), the theory of hypothesis testing, t-tests, ANOVA (between- and within-subject) and linear (simple and multiple) regression. In addition to the lecture, the course has a laboratory component in which the concepts and techniques from lecture are further studied with the aid of the computer. The labs use Microsoft Excel as a means of performing calculations (often building the components of a test), preparing data graphs and tables and writing answers to a series of short answer questions designed to reveal to the student aspects of the concepts that are hard to see in lecture or their reading. The laboratory component is a welcome relief from the lecture format of traditional statistics because it forces the student to become an active participant in his or her learning.
Assignments and Grading
The computer-based assignments based on the techniques being taught in the lab. You will be required to submit these assignments electronically. Two exams will be given during the semester as well as a cumulative final at the end of the course. Please note that no makeup exams can be given without a note from the class dean. The final grade will be calculated as follows: 50% of the final grade will be based on the two midsemester exams (25% and 25%), 20% of the final grade will be based on the homework assignments, and the other 30% of the final grade will be based upon the final exam.
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