What is a p-value anyway? 34 Stories to Help You Actually Understand Statistics, 1st edition

Published by Pearson (November 18, 2009) © 2010

  • Andrew J. Vickers
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What is a p-value Anyway offers a fun introduction to the fundamental principles of statistics, presenting the essential concepts in thirty-four brief, enjoyable stories. Drawing on his experience as a medical researcher, Vickers blends insightful explanations and humor, with minimal math, to help readers understand and interpret the statistics they read every day.

What is a p-value Anyway is the perfect compliment to any introductory statistics textbook and will succeed in demonstrating the everyday importance of statistics to your class.
  • Introduction
  • 0. How to read this book
  • 1. I tell a friend that my job is more fun than you'd think: What is statistics?
  • Describing data
  • 2. So Bill Gates walks into a diner: on means and medians
  • 3. Bill Gates goes back to the diner: standard deviation and interquartile range
  • 4. A skewed shot, a biased referee
  • 5. You can't have 2.6 children: on different types of data
  • 6. Why your high school math teacher was right: how to draw a graph
  • Data distributions
  • 7. Chutes-and-ladders and serum hemoglobin levels: thoughts on the normal distribution
  • 8. If the normal distribution is so normal, how come my data never are?
  • 9. But I like that sweater: what amount of fit is a "good enough" fit?
  • Variation of study results: confidence intervals
  • 10. Long hair: a standard error of the older male
  • 11. How to avoid a rainy wedding: variation and confidence
  • 12. Statistical ties, and why you shouldn't wear one: more on confidence intervals
  • Hypothesis testing
  • 13. Choosing a route to cycle home: what p-values do for us
  • 14. A statistical theory of how to get a five-year old boy to brush his teeth: defining the p-value
  • 15. Michael Jordan won't accept the null hypothesis: how to interpret high p-values
  • 16. The difference between sports and business: thoughts on the t test and the Wilcoxon test
  • 17. Meeting up with friends: on sample size, precision and statistical power
  • Regression and decision making
  • 18. When to visit Chicago: about linear and logistic regression
  • 19. My assistant turns up for work with shorter hair: about regression and confounding
  • 20. I ignore my child's cough, my wife panics: about specificity and sensitivity
  • 21. Avoid the sales: statistics to help make decisions
  • Some common statistical errors, and what they teach us
  • 22. One better than Tommy John: four statistical errors that are totally trivial, but which matter a great deal
  • 23. Weed control for p-values: a single scientific question should be addressed by a single statistical test
  • 24. How to shoot a TV episode: avoiding statistical analyses that don't provid

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