Resource Library

This site provides an introduction to basic statistical concepts for journalists and writers with little math background. Key Words: Mean; Median; Percent Changes; Per capita; Rates; Standard Deviation; Normal Distribution; Margin of Error; Confidence Interval; Data Analysis; Sample Sizes; Statistical Tests; Student's T.

This page provides a table for selecting an appropriate statistical method based on type of data and what information is desired from the data. It also compares parametric and nonparametric tests, one-sided and two-sided p-values, paired and unpaired tests, Fisher's test and the Chi-square test, and regression and correlation. It comes from Chapter 37 of the textbook, "Intuitive Biostatistics".

This applet allows students to explore three methods for measuring "goodness of fit" of a linear model. Users can manipulate both the data and the regression line to see changes in the square error, the absolute error, and the shortest distance from the data point to the regression line.

What do you call a tea party with more than 30 people? A Z party! This is joke #123 on http://www.ilstu.edu/~gcramsey/Gallery.html Gary Ramseyer's First Internet Gallery of Statistics Jokes and is attributed by the gallery to Stacey Ecott.

Life is a school of probability. A quote attributed to English journalist and longtime editor of "The Economist" newspaper, Walter Bagehot (1826 - 1877). The quote is found in "The World of Mathematics", J.R. Newman (ed.); Simon and Schuster, 1956 p. 1360.

A knowledge of statistics is like a knowledge of foreign languages or of algebra; it may prove of use at any time under any circumstances. Quote from "Elements of Statistics" by English statistician, economist and early proponent of using statistics in the social sciences, Sir Arthur Lyon Bowley (1869 - 1957).

USA Today has come out with a new survey - apparently three out of four people make up 75 percent of the population. Quote from comedian and late night talk show host David Letterman (1947 - ).

One sees in this essay that the theory of probabilities is basically only common sense reduced to a calculus. This quote of French astronomer and mathematician Pierre-Simon Laplace (1749 - 1827) may be found in "A philosophical Essay on Probabilities" (Springer, 1995) p. 124 English translation of "Essai Philosophique sur les Probabilites (1814)"

Statistical thinking will one day be as necessary for efficient citizenship as the ability to read and write! Quote from the presidential address in 1951 of mathematical statistician Samuel S. Wilks (1906 - 1964) to the American Statistical Association found in "JASA",Vol. 46, No. 253., pp. 1-18. Wilks was paraphrasing Herbert G. Wells (1866 - 1946) from his book "Mankind in the Making". The full H.G. Wells quote reads: "The great body of physical science, a great deal of the essential fact of financial science, and endless social and political problems are only accessible and only thinkable to those who have had a sound training in mathematical analysis, and the time may not be very remote when it will be understood that for complete initiation as an efficient citizen of one of the new great complex worldwide States that are now developing, it is as necessary to be able to compute, to think in averages and maxima and minima, as it is now to be able to read and write."

Forecasting is very difficult, especially about the future. A quote of business economist Edgar R. Fiedler (1929 - 2003) found in "Across the Board", the magazine of The Conference Board, Inc. (June, 1977). The quote also appears in "Statistically Speaking: A dictionary of quotations" compiled by Carl Gaither and Alma Cavazos-Gaither.