George Self <se...@cochise.edu>: Dec 11 08:58AM -0800
I teach an undergrad research methodology class and wrote a SOFA-based lab
manual for that class that some of you may be interested in. You can find
the manual and the data sets at https://goo.gl/4lpIaO.
The manual has ten chapters:
1. Introduction (data types, normal distribution, kurtosis, skew, null
hypothesis, downloading/installing SOFA, recoding data)
2. Central Measures (mean, median, mode)
3. Data Dispersion (range, quartiles, standard deviation)
4. Visualizing Dispersion (box charts)
5. Frequency Tables (frequency tables, crosstabs, complex crosstabs)
6. Visualizing Frequency (histogram, bar chart, clustered bar chart, pie
chart, line graph)
7. Correlation (pearson's r, spearman's rho, significance, scatter plots)
8. Regression
9. Hypothesis Testing: Nonparametric Statistics (SOFA Statistics Wizard,
Kruskal-Wallis H, Wilcoxon Signed Ranks, Mann-Whitney U)
10. Hypothesis Testing: Parametric Statistics (ANOVA,
t-test-Independent, t-test-Paired)
There are also two appendices, the first is a data dictionary for each of
the data sets used and the second covers the various report generating
features of SOFA.
The lab manual covers all of the functions and features of SOFA, but in the
context of a lab where those functions are practiced rather than just
described. The manual also includes a lot of information about how the
various statistical measures are used (for example, the difference between
correlation and causation). No math knowledge beyond simple high school
algebra is assumed on the part of the student and each of the labs includes
a "deliverable" activity so instructors can use this as part of a class.
I've printed this manual under Creative Commons-BY-ShareAlike so please
feel free to use this in any way you want. Of course, I'm also happy to
receive comments that could help me improve this manual in the future.
--George
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