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Best way to brush up on Stats before grad school?


meep95

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My undergrad didn't have a great stats program. I have to take another intermediate stats course as a pre-requisite to my other classes for grad school, and i feel like I hardly remember how to do stats from when I took it  a few years ago.  I know how to do basic SPSS stuff like descriptives, frequencies, ANOVA's, etc. But the actual math not involving SPSS and how to read scientific sentences has me worried. I also have a great assistantship lined up, and will involve some research so I want to make sure I am prepared for that as well.  Do you guys have any programs or videos or math youtube channels you would recommend to refresh myself over the summer?

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I kept all of my old stats books so I could brush up on the basic stuff. I also TAd for an undergrad stats course a year and a half after I took it. I didn't remember anything going in to it. Then after reviewing some material it was like riding a bike. It came back to me relatively quickly. If you kept any of your old books, go through them and find some problems. Try working them out, if you don't remember how to do them, reread the chapter. If you didn't keep your old books, look up problem sets online.

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I also kept all of my old stats textbooks from my undergrad, and I found Andy Field's books really helpful. Although Field's books are specific for using programs like SPSS, he does a great job explaining stats and makes it sound fun so it's not a bore or super dreadful to read through. Hope that helps :)

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4 hours ago, TrindStarr said:

I also kept all of my old stats textbooks from my undergrad, and I found Andy Field's books really helpful. Although Field's books are specific for using programs like SPSS, he does a great job explaining stats and makes it sound fun so it's not a bore or super dreadful to read through. Hope that helps :)

I'll check his book out for sure! Thank you

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Try out some free online courses on Coursera! They obviously aren't outrageously in depth but it should provide a good brush up on skills, terms, and concepts. That's what I'm doing now between now and my first semester :)

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2 hours ago, fritolay said:

Try out some free online courses on Coursera! They obviously aren't outrageously in depth but it should provide a good brush up on skills, terms, and concepts. That's what I'm doing now between now and my first semester :)

I'm glad this thread exists! I haven't taken a stats class since 2012 so I am rusty. Definitely going to check out Coursera, thank you fritolay! :)

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On 3/5/2017 at 5:17 PM, TrindStarr said:

I also kept all of my old stats textbooks from my undergrad, and I found Andy Field's books really helpful. Although Field's books are specific for using programs like SPSS, he does a great job explaining stats and makes it sound fun so it's not a bore or super dreadful to read through. Hope that helps :)

How useful would the book be without access to SPSS? I see that there are open source alternatives to SPSS, like PSPP and JASP, which I guess I could try to use while following along with the book. Of the two offers/POIs I'm considering, both mostly use Matlab and R, and maybe Python, C/C++, and Java if appropriate (and the grad student already knows them or can learn them quickly because of prior programming experience).

Also, does anyone know how different the latest edition is from the 3rd edition?

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1 hour ago, hh0505 said:

How useful would the book be without access to SPSS? I see that there are open source alternatives to SPSS, like PSPP and JASP, which I guess I could try to use while following along with the book. Of the two offers/POIs I'm considering, both mostly use Matlab and R, and maybe Python, C/C++, and Java if appropriate (and the grad student already knows them or can learn them quickly because of prior programming experience).

Also, does anyone know how different the latest edition is from the 3rd edition?

 

I found the book super helpful even without the use of SPSS. Any Field does a great job of explaining the stats in his book rather than just teaching you how to find certain data in SPSS. He's funny and makes it interesting to read. However, I have an ebook copy so it's especially easy for me to ctrl+F to find something specific that I'm looking for. I don't know what PSPP or JASP is, but Field also has a book for using R that I have as well but I haven't read through it yet. I want to learn how to use R and loved Field's SPSS book a lot so I figured his R book would be great too. We'll see I guess

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