Lecture notes up

I put up some lecture notes that I use in my statistics course. Usually in one semester I only manage notes 2-4 (over 15 90 minute meetings).

They are located here.

Corrected pages in book

I've added a zip archive of corrected pages, where I corrected some of the errors that were pointed out to me by Christian Robert. You can access it here:

http://www.ling.uni-potsdam.de/~vasishth/CorrectedPages.zip

Some of the changes Christian suggests require rewriting parts of the text; I've started doing that, but publishing the whole book again will have to wait until the next corrected edition can come out (say the publishers---apparently they have to wait till the existing copies are sold). Until the corrected edition appears, I will keep updating this blog and the book's home page with corrections.

Please tell me if you find more problems in the text.

Lower p-values apparently give you more confidence in the alternative hypothesis

"But an isolated finding, especially when embodied in a 2 X 2 design, at the .05 level or even the .01 level was frequently judged not sufficiently impressive to warrant archival publication." (p. 554)

From: Melton, A. W. (1962). Editorial. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 64, 553–557.

According to Gigerenzer et al (Published in: D. Kaplan (Ed.). (2004). The Sage handbook of quantitative methodology for the social sciences (pp. 391–408)), this quote is where the common convention comes from to use p-values as a measure of one's belief in a result.

Gigerenzer et al write: 

"Editors of major journals such as A. W. Melton (1962) made null hypothesis testing a necessary

condition for the acceptance of papers and made small p-values the hallmark of excellent

experimentation."

Useful website for people interested in data analysis

Here's a revolutionary website: all data and code accompanying papers.

http://read.psych.uni-potsdam.de/pmr2/

Imagine if it was mandatory to release data with your publication! It would make life so much easier.

Is this book for you?

Here is a simple test to decide whether this book is aimed at your current ability level:

Define odds as: odds=p/(1-p). Can you define p in terms of odds? 

If you couldn't solve it, don't feel dejected. That's a problem that can be fixed, and besides, I know a lot of people who are in the same boat as you. Our book is not designed to fix this problem (that would require more contact with mathematics, which is up to you), but our book is designed to teach a little bit to people who're at this level.


PS You may benefit from the book even if you could solve the above problem. Just take a look and decide for yourself.

Errata

The semester is finally over, and I've started working on an errata for the book.

Here is the current list of errors (I'll update it as I get time): 

http://www.ling.uni-potsdam.de/ErrataVasishthBroe.pdf

Please send me email if you find any other errors (including errors in the errata ;).

How to do Maximum Likelihood Estimation by hand

http://www.johnmyleswhite.com/notebook/2010/04/21/doing-maximum-likelihood-estimation-by-hand-in-r/