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2012 | Book

Excel 2007 for Social Science Statistics

A Guide to Solving Practical Problems

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About this book

This is the first book to show the capabilities of Microsoft Excel to teach social science statistics effectively. It is a step-by-step exercise-driven guide for students and practitioners who need to master Excel to solve practical problems. If understanding statistics isn’t your strongest suit, you are not especially mathematically-inclined, or if you are wary of computers, this is the right book for you.

Excel, a widely available computer program for students and managers, is also an effective teaching and learning tool for quantitative analyses in social science courses. Its powerful computational ability and graphical functions make learning statistics much easier than in years past. However, Excel 2007 for Social Science Statistics: A Guide to Solving Practical Problems is the first book to capitalize on these improvements by teaching students and managers how to apply Excel to statistical techniques necessary in their courses and work.

Each chapter explains statistical formulas and directs the reader to use Excel commands to solve specific, easy-to-understand problems. Practice problems are provided at the end of each chapter with their solutions in an appendix. Separately, there is a full Practice Test (with answers in an Appendix) that allows readers to test what they have learned.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter
Chapter 1. Sample Size, Mean, Standard Deviation, and Standard Error of the Mean
Abstract
This chapter deals with how you can use Excel to find the average (i.e., “mean”) of a set of scores, the standard deviation of these scores (STDEV), and the standard error of the mean (s.e.) of these scores. All three of these statistics are basic to the study of statistics and are used frequently within many additional statistical tests. The formulas are presented, explained, and a practical example is given for each formula that shows how the formula can be applied using a calculator. Then, the steps needed to compute these formulas using Excel commands are explained so that you can practice using Excel to use these formulas correctly. You will also learn how to use Fill/Series commands, how to change the width of a column, how to center information in a group of cells, how to give a “name” to a group of cells, how to find the sample size for a data set, how to format numbers with a specific number of decimal places, how to save an Excel worksheet into your computer, and how to print out an Excel worksheet. Three practice problems are given at the end of the chapter to test your Excel skills, and the answers to these problems appear in Appendix A of this book. An additional practice problem is presented in the Practice Test given in Appendix B along with its answer in Appendix C of this book.
Thomas J. Quirk
Chapter 2. Random Number Generator
Abstract
This chapter explains how to use Excel to take a random sample of people (or objects) from a sampling frame that contains the list of people from which you want to take a random sample. You will learn how to use Excel to create frame numbers for generating random numbers, why a set of duplicate frame numbers is important, and the Excel commands needed to sort the frame numbers into a random sequence. In addition, you will learn how to print your result so that all of the information fits entirely onto a single page of paper. Three practice problems are given at the end of the chapter to test your Excel skills, and the answers to these problems appear in Appendix A of this book. An additional practice problem is presented in the Practice Test given in Appendix B along with its answer in Appendix C of this book.
Thomas J. Quirk
Chapter 3. Confidence Interval About the Mean Using the TINV Function and Hypothesis Testing
Abstract
This chapter explains how to find the 95% confidence interval about the mean for a set of data, and how to test hypothesis about your data using this confidence interval. You will learn how to estimate the population mean (average) for a group of people (or objects) at a 95% confidence level so that you are 95% confident that the population mean is between a lower limit of the data and an upper limit of the data. The formula for computing this confidence interval is presented, explained, and a sample problem is given using your calculator. You will then learn how to use Excel commands to determine the 95% confidence interval about the mean using Excel’s TINV function. The second half of this chapter explains hypothesis testing and how you can test hypotheses about your data using Excel commands to find the 95% confidence about the mean for your data. Seven steps are presented for this test, and you will be given specific explanations of how to write both the result and the conclusion of an hypothesis test. Alternative ways to summarize the result of an hypothesis test are also presented. Three practice problems are given at the end of the chapter to test your Excel skills, and the answers to these problems appear in Appendix A of this book. An additional practice problem is presented in the Practice Test given in Appendix B along with its answer in Appendix C of this book.
Thomas J. Quirk
Chapter 4. One-Group t-Test for the Mean
Abstract
This chapter explains how to use one of the most popular and most helpful statistical tests in social science research: the one-group t-test for the mean. This test compares the mean of your data set against the hypothesized population mean for your data to determine if the difference between these two values is “large enough” to be considered a “significant difference.” The formula is presented, explained, and a practical example is given using your calculator. Seven steps are outlined for using this formula to test specific hypotheses about your data. These steps build on the hypothesis testing steps you learned in Chap.​ 3 of this book. You will also learn how to find the absolute value of a number, how to find the critical value of t in the table given in Appendix E of this book, and how to state both the result and conclusion of your statistical test. The specific Excel steps are presented to test the “friendliness” of the front desk clerk at a hotel using a 10-point rating scale. In addition, the difference between the 95% confidence interval about the mean (Chap.​ 3) and the one-group t-test is explained. Three practice problems are given at the end of the chapter to test your Excel skills, and the answers to these problems appear in Appendix A of this book. An additional practice problem is presented in the Practice Test given in Appendix B along with its answer in Appendix C of this book.
Thomas J. Quirk
Chapter 5. Two-Group t-Test of the Difference of the Means for Independent Groups
Abstract
Up until now in this book, you have been dealing with the situation in which you have had only one group of people (or objects) in your research study and one measurement “number” on each of these people. This chapter asks you to change gears and deal with the situation in which you are measuring two groups of people instead of only one group of people. The nine steps for hypothesis testing using the two-group t-test are presented, including the decision rule for either accepting or rejecting the null hypothesis for your data, and writing both the result and conclusion of your statistical test. Two formulas are presented in this chapter for this test. You need to use Formula #1 whenever both of your groups have more than 30 people in them, and Formula #2 whenever one or both of your groups have less than 30 people in them. The Excel steps are presented for both of these formulas using a practical example. Three practice problems are given at the end of the chapter to test your Excel skills, and the answers to these problems appear in Appendix A of this book. An additional practice problem is presented in the Practice Test given in Appendix B along with its answer in Appendix C of this book.
Thomas J. Quirk
Chapter 6. Correlation and Simple Linear Regression
Abstract
Up until now in this book, you have been dealing with the situation in which you have had only one group or two groups of people (or objects) in your research study and only one measurement (i.e., variable) “number” on each of these people. This chapter asks you to change gears again and to deal with the situation in which you are measuring two variables instead of only one variable and you are trying to discover the “relationship” between these variables. For example, if one variable increases in value, does the other variable increase in value (i.e., a “positive” relationship) or decrease in value (i.e., a negative relationship), and is this relationship “weak” or “strong?” The formula for the correlation r is presented, explained, and the nine steps for computing a correlation are explained using a calculator example. Then, the Excel commands for computing a correlation are presented along with the Excel steps needed to create a chart summarizing the relationship between the two variables. You will learn how to use Excel to draw the “best-fit line” through the data points on a scatterplot and how to determine the equation for this line so that you can use this equation to predict one variable from the other variable. You will learn both how to print a chart by itself, and how to print both the table and the chart so that they fit onto a single page. Three practice problems are given at the end of the chapter to test your Excel skills, and the answers to these problems appear in Appendix A of this book. An additional practice problem is presented in the Practice Test given in Appendix B along with its answer in Appendix C of this book.
Thomas J. Quirk
Chapter 7. Multiple Correlation and Multiple Regression
Abstract
There are many times in social science research when you want to predict a criterion, Y, but you want to find out if you can develop a better prediction model by using several predictors to predict Y instead of a single predictor as we discussed in Chap. 6 of this book. The resulting statistical procedure is called “multiple correlation” because it uses two or more predictors, each weighted differently in an equation, to predict Y. The job of multiple correlation is to determine if using several predictors can do a better job of predicting Y than any single predictor by itself. The equation for multiple correlation is presented, explained, and a practical problem is used to present the Excel commands needed to find the multiple correlation and the multiple regression equation generated from the data set. Excel commands are also used to create a Summary Output which gives the coefficients needed to write the multiple regression equation for the data. Finally, the Excel commands needed to find the correlation between all of the variables is explained so that you can create a “correlation matrix” for your data set. You will learn how to read this correlation matrix to determine the correlation between any two variables in your study. Three practice problems are given at the end of the chapter to test your Excel skills, and the answers to these problems appear in Appendix A of this book. An additional practice problem is presented in the Practice Test given in Appendix B along with its answer in Appendix C of this book.
Thomas J. Quirk
Chapter 8. One-Way Analysis of Variance (ANOVA)
Abstract
So far in this book, you have learned how to test for the difference within one group of data between the mean of the group and the hypothesized population mean for the data using either the 95% confidence interval about the mean (Chap. 3 of this book) or the one-group t-test of the mean (Chap. 4 of this book). You have also learned how to test for the difference between the means for two groups of people to determine if this difference was a “significant” difference (Chap. 5 of this book). In this chapter, you will learn how to test for the difference between groups on a single variable when you have three or more groups of data. A practical problem is presented that walks you through the Excel steps needed to generate the output for a one-way ANOVA F-test. You will learn how to interpret the Summary Output table correctly, and how to test the hypotheses comparing the population means of the three or more groups to see if they are “significantly different from each other.” If this overall ANOVA F-test produces a significant result, you will learn how to test the hypotheses comparing any two groups using an ANOVA t-test formula. This formula is presented, explained, and a practical example is used delineating the five steps needed to perform this test using a calculator. Then, the Excel steps for using this formula are presented and explained. Three practice problems are given at the end of the chapter to test your Excel skills, and the answers to these problems appear in Appendix A of this book. An additional practice problem is presented in the Practice Test given in Appendix B along with its answer in Appendix C of this book.
Thomas J. Quirk
Backmatter
Metadata
Title
Excel 2007 for Social Science Statistics
Author
Thomas J. Quirk
Copyright Year
2012
Publisher
Springer New York
Electronic ISBN
978-1-4614-3622-5
Print ISBN
978-1-4614-3621-8
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-3622-5

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