Basic Statistics for the Behavioral Sciences

by Gary W. Heiman

Each statistical procedure in this text is presented in a conceptual, intuitive manner to illustrate how it fills a need in the process. Students anxious about math will benefit from a scaled back emphasis on the discipline, plain language, and a step-by-step approach that reintroduces, reviews, and reinforces procedures. In addition, references to psychology have been reduced to make the text more inclusive of all behavioral sciences. The text has been revised to streamline the narrative without reducing content, make presentations more concise, and add more explanatory techniques. Nearly all examples include specific variables and questions rather than generic data, and most are taken from everyday life so that students gain an intuitive feel for the meaning of scores and develop an ability to think in statistical terms.

Genres: Psychology, Textbooks, Nonfiction, Mathematics

Hardcover

First published January 1, 1992

Reviews

[Sean · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is just an abridged statistics book with an informal tone. I would only use this as a refresher. A lot of intro statistic books seem to end up using a black box approach where formulas are given with brief explanations on how to use them so that's normal, especially for the different tests for analysis. Doing self study, this book could really help as a lot of the calculations are explained out on how to do them. However, it comes at the cost of not having a proper worked out example to refer to. Over all not bad. The easy concepts are overexplained. I thought it was about to have a section on what a ratio is. The more advanced concepts (are rightfully) just touched on. The linear regression made me laugh. At the end of the day, it gave the formula as a line which is right but it's just a different beast when you tackle it in calculus and linear algebra to understand why it works.

[Kerry Moran · Rating 2 out of 5]

Myself, and most people in my class, found this book overly complicated the subject and made things more difficult to understand. Most of us agreed that reading the book made us do worse on tests and labs than the weeks we skipped the chapters and relied solely on the professor’s power points and lectures. It was not a great teaching tool and I genuinely would not recommend it for understanding statistics.

[Broodingferret · Rating 3 out of 5]

The author made several attempts to lighten the subject matter of this book with humor. He failed most of them, like that turbo-geek in high school who could never get the timing or delivery down right on his jokes. Still, Heiman (must have gotten a lot of flak in school) went into enough detail on the calculation concepts to at least make them graspable.

[Kymberly · Rating 2 out of 5]

I have to be honest, I and many of my fellow students disliked this class with a passion. This book did not help much with understanding the material. Not impressed at all. Defiantly will not keep this one either will I ever want to take this class again.

[Bianca · Rating 3 out of 5]

A very basic introduction to statistics. Good if you are learning these stats for the first time or for a quick refresher.

[Josh · Rating 3 out of 5]

A decent statistics book with very good explanation. However, I do wish there was more examples regarding the field of psychology.

[Jessica Bensinger · Rating 3 out of 5]

A helpful resource