Background for Psychology 613

Entering students ask what they should do to prepare for the first year statistics sequence. A good strategy is to review over the summer either your notes from an undergraduate statistics course or work through an undergraduate statistics book. You should be familiar with measures of central tendency (means, medians), measures of variability (variance, interquartile range), graphical devices (boxplot, scatterplot), the logic of hypothesis testing, the notion of a confidence interval, and details surrounding one and two-sample t-tests. The year-long course is self-contained beyond that basic level, but I do assume that you know those topics so come prepared the first lecture.

Some of you may benefit from taking a background course the summer before your first year. One possibility is to take a course through ICPSR . Probably the most relevant preparation course is Introduction to Statistics and Data Analysis I.

My course emphasizes practical techniques for analyzing data. I do not cover the mathematics of the underlying statistical theory. If you are interested in the mathematical detail, you should consider taking courses in the statistics department. Keep in mind that a solid background in calculus, measure theory, linear algebra, etc., is needed to excel in a mathematically oriented course. This possibility should be discussed with the individual student.

See the Psychology 613 and 614 syllabi for specific information about the first year statistics sequence in psychology.