~AEA Public Library

Session Description From 2010 Summer Evaluation Institute

Description: Brush up on your statistics! We will focus primarily on descriptive statistics: measures of central tendency (e.g., the mean) and measures of dispersion (e.g., standard deviation), defining what these terms mean, when and how to use them, and how to present them to evaluation stakeholders. From there, we will move to a basic discussion of inferential statistics, the difference between a statistic and a parameter, and the use of population parameters. The workshop will involve demonstrations by the presenter using SPSS software as well as hands-on exercises for you to calculate some of the descriptive statistics we cover. This workshop is not designed to teach you how to use SPSS or any other statistical software package, but rather to introduce you to the process of statistical analysis and interpreting statistical output. We will focus on interpreting statistical indices (e.g., means and standard deviations) as well as graphical output, such as histograms and stem-and-leaf plots. The understanding you gain regarding the concepts presented in this course, coupled with the chance to interpret statistical output, should ready you to employ basic descriptive statistics as well as to interpret the work of others.

Audience: Attendees who have never taken a statistics course before, or who feel they need a refresher workshop on basic statistics. Those who attend this workshop need no prior background in statistics

Katherine McKnight has taught statistics workshops at AEA's annual conferences for many years. An outstanding facilitator, she is known for making difficult concepts accessible and interesting.

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