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Fundamentals of Statistical Inference

  Gary D. Borich

Department of Educational Psychology

The University of Texas at Austin

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Available from: Ables Reprints, 715 D West 23rd in Towers Court. 472-5353

PREFACE

In teaching a graduate level introductory statistics course, it occurred to me that it might be useful for students to have a practical, no frills text to accompany my lectures. The purpose of this text would be to succinctly capture the main points of my lectures so that note taking might be minimized, allowing for greater attention to the conceptual development of the ideas being presented. I have often noticed the enormous effort expended by students in the note taking process and have often thought whether, for some, the recording task became more important than the concepts being recorded.

To address this concern, I have prepared this text. It is, to be sure, a shorter text than most, as some concepts are treated in abbreviated form, while others that might comprise a more advanced text are given only passing comment. These omissions are intentional due to the infrequent use of some statistical procedures or their lack of relevance for practitioner-oriented students who aspire to become intelligent consumers of the research literature more than full-time quantitative specialists. It is the former audience for whom this text is written.

A second characteristic that distinguishes this text from others is that, although it is intended for use in a beginning statistics course in the social and behavioral sciences, it is written for students who are preparing to take a second and perhaps even a third course. Toward this end, the focus of this text is on providing a foundation for those statistical concepts and procedures that recur in subsequent courses and repeatedly in the actual world of research. Hence, its emphasis is on the concepts of inferential statistics, which represent that branch of statistics most frequently used in conducting research in the social and behavioral sciences.

This text represents one other characteristic that may distinguish it from others. It represents the view of the author that no one approach to the teaching of statistics is superior to any other. Although virtually every published introductory text covers the same concepts in almost identical order, this may be the result of convention and tradition more than thoughtful pedagogy. While I have no fault with traditional formats, there is no compelling reason that every textbook in statistics should cover the same concepts in the same sequence, if alternative approaches help to illustrate concepts and to promote a deeper understanding. Contrary to popular impressions, the field of statistics is not so cast in concrete as to preclude varying treatments of a topic or some fresh viewpoints. These alternative treatments and viewpoints I have found often aid students in obtaining a deeper, more conceptual grasp of the field of statistics. For this reason, this text addresses some topics in a nontraditional manner which I hope will be helpful to the practitioner-oriented reader.

This text is designed to be used in conjunction with a series of approximately fourteen 2 1/2 hour lectures. These lectures place in perspective the concepts presented in this text, expand earlier simplifications, and extend concepts to some important but less often used applications. In other words, this text offers the structure or vehicle with which to understand introductory statistics but does not represent the whole of the field. Instead of regurgitating this detail, I have chosen to present, in an economical format, the most relevant concepts with which this greater detail can be studied and understood. In this respect this text represents one of several means of attaining a broader understanding of the fundamentals of statistical inference.

G.D.B.
Austin, Texas

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