Stats help online?

Gemmzie

I'm currently doing my psychology coursework and missed the lectures on stats. I need to work out the t-test but my numbers keep coming out negative.

Don't worry - I'm not cheating as I know there's a woman at college who you can see to work this out for you. It's just I can't get to see her today.

Can anyone help?

DrFluffy

Would need to see the data and what you've done with your workings to see where you're going wrong and what the answer is...

melancholly

if you google andy field and go to his website, it has lots and lots of information on all kinds of stats. he's the guy who wrote probably the best text book on stats and how to do all the tests, then how to get spss to do it too. i would bookmark his page as it is very helpful!!

you may get a t value that is negative, it just depends on which way around you have your groups (if the mean of one is higher than the other) - so it might not be that you've done it wrong!

this link claims to calculate it all for you, so you could enter your data and see if it gets the same result as you:
http://www.graphpad.com/quickcalcs/ttest1.cfm

johnofhertford

melancholly wrote:

he's the guy who wrote probably the best text book on stats

I think Ronald Fisher, David Cox, and numerous others would take some issue with that, but anyway don't you kids have computers to do these things for you nowadays?

melancholly

johnofhertford wrote:

I think Ronald Fisher, David Cox, and numerous others would take some issue with that, but anyway don't you kids have computers to do these things for you nowadays?

in terms of writing statistics for those who are not as comfortable in maths as others, andy field has done more the help psychology students to understand what tests mean and how they work than anyone else of late. hence he was awarded the BPS (British Psychological Society) award for excellence in the teaching of psychology in 2005. also, as in my other post, had you quoted my comment in full, the key thing that he does is link statistical theory with how to use SPSS which is the computer program 'us kids' use to do statistics. a computer program is only useful if you know how to use it properly and how to interpet its results.

(and btw I have no affiliation with andy field or sussex university - i recommend his website to all the students that need to use stats, and his text book is the bestselling one on amazon, so I feel that my comment was more than justified )

Luvly.cuppa.T

[QUOTE=http://www.graphpad.com/quickcalcs/ttest1.cfm[/QUOTE]

Heh. He's my lecturer this semester and proudly gave us a description of his book today in the intro to it all. He teaches research methods (stats) funnily enough. Andy Fields will be teaching us later on in the year. Pleased to have that privilidge.

Good to hear that the book is worth getting too!!

Oooops, totally read web link wrong. I thought it said Grahamh , aka Graham Hole. Himself and Andy have written another book together about composing questionnaires. Seems a good laugh....!

Gemmzie

Thanks for that, will put the numbers through and see what happens