Table of Contents

Table of Contents#

Front Matter#

  • Preface

  • Copyright

  • Acknowledgments

  • About the Authors

Part I — Describing the World in Numbers#

Chapter 1 — The Vitals of Data Understanding Study Design and Levels of Measurement Observational vs. experimental design · Categorical vs. continuous data · Nominal · Ordinal · Interval · Ratio · The datasets classified. Lab: Loading observational and experimental datasets in R and PSPP.

Chapter 2 — The Middle and the Mess Measures of Central Tendency and Variability Mean · Median · Mode · Range · Variance · Standard deviation · Bessel’s correction · Skewness · Box plots. Lab: Descriptive statistics for blood pressure and cholesterol.

Chapter 3 — The Margin of Error Uncertainty, Sampling, and Confidence Intervals Population parameters vs. sample statistics · Standard error · 95% Confidence interval · Accuracy vs. precision · Bias. Lab: Computing and interpreting CIs for key Framingham variables.

Part II — Testing What We Think We Know#

Chapter 4 — The Laws of Chance Probability Distributions and Normality Assessment Normal distribution · Empirical Rule · Binomial · Poisson · Central Limit Theorem · Histogram · Q-Q plot · Shapiro-Wilk test · Epidemic curves. Lab: Normality assessment in PSPP and R.

Chapter 5 — The Hypothesis Gamble Hypothesis Testing, P-Values, and Statistical Power Sampling methods · H₀ and H₁ · P-value and its four misinterpretations · Type I and II errors · Statistical power · One-sample t-test. Lab: Is mean systolic BP different from a reference value?

Chapter 6 — A Tale of Two Groups Independent and Paired Comparisons Independent vs. paired design · Levene’s test · Welch’s correction · Independent and Paired t-tests · Non-parametric alternatives (Mann-Whitney U, Wilcoxon Signed-Rank). Lab: Comparing blood pressure by smoking status; evaluating weight change in a clinical trial.

Part III — Comparing More Than Two Groups#

Chapter 7 — Scaling Up ANOVA, Chi-Square, and Categorical Comparisons Multiple comparisons problem · FWER · One-way ANOVA · F-statistic · Tukey’s HSD · Kruskal-Wallis · Comparing proportions · Relative Risk (RR) and Odds Ratios (OR) · Chi-Square · Fisher’s Exact Test. Lab: Cholesterol across education groups; therapy type by weight gain; smoking × CHD association.

Chapter 8 — Reading the Future Correlation, Regression, and Survival Analysis Pearson’s r · Spearman’s rho · Correlation vs. causation · Simple linear regression · Introduction to logistic regression · Kaplan-Meier curves · Log-rank test. Lab: Age predicts systolic BP; predicting CHD risk; survival by smoking status.

Part IV — Putting It All Together#

Chapter 9 — The Full Picture Course Review and Examination Preparation Course summary table · Key formulas · Effect size reference · Four-step test selection guide · APA reporting templates. Lab: Final review using PSPP and R cheat sheets.

Data and Resources#

  • The data/ Repository — Access the Framingham and Anorexia datasets, alongside their complete Data Dictionaries.

Back Matter#

  • References and Further Reading

  • How to Contribute

Contents