An overview of statistical analysis and research design as they pertain to psychological science, broadly construed.
Starting in Fall 2012, this course will
have 3-credit and a 4-credit options.
Both options cover the same course material at the same depth of
analysis. However, the 4-credit
option also includes training in the use of statistical software (specifically, R). All course materials will be available
to all students irrespective of the option they select, but software-based
assignments will only be graded for students taking the fourth credit. If you are planning on doing honors
research, then taking the fourth credit is definitely advisable.
·
Syllabus
from Fall 2011 (pdf)
·
Links to download the R environment and the supplementary
enhanced environment RStudio. You should install the basic R
environment before installing RStudio. Both are free (as in both beer and
freedom), cross-platform (Macintosh, Windows, Linux), and open-source.
Psychology 3500, Statistics and Research Design, is the
standard statistical analysis course for the Psychology major. Psychology
majors should plan on taking it. However, if this is not possible, other
statistics courses taught at Cornell can also satisfy the major requirement.
The final decision on whether a given course is acceptable rests with your
major adviser. That said, you generally can expect the
following policy:
The following courses are acceptable:
·
PSYCH 3500
·
PAM 2100 (Introductory statistics)
·
STSCI 2200/BTRY 3010 (Biological
statistics I)
The following are sometimes acceptable:
·
AEM 2100 (Introductory statistics) --
probably OK; still under review
·
ECON 3190 (Intro to stats and
probability) -- if and only if you are a Psych/Econ double major
The following generally do not meet the requirements of the
psychology major
·
MATH 1710
·
ILRST 2100 / STSCI 2100 -- the full-year version of this course may be OK; check with the Psych
3500 instructor
Contact me regarding any
other statistics courses, and please send along a PDF of the course syllabus
and (if you have already taken it) tell me your grade in the course. You can
also challenge the statistics requirement by taking a
comprehensive exam covering the subject matter.
This is not a judgment of the quality of other courses; rather,
it is an issue of which statistical principles are most relevant for particular
major fields, such that they must be covered in some depth and in the appropriate
context for their likely use within the field. Some introductory statistics
courses, for example, cover regression analyses in greater depth at the expense
of means testing (e.g., two-factor ANOVA, repeated-measures ANOVA, post hoc
tests) and nonparametric tests of significance (chi-square, Kruskal-Wallis'
H); these analyses are an essential component of introductory statistics for
psychological science.
Visit the Statistics and Research Design page on Blackboard.
Questions to Thomas Cleland (tac29@cornell.edu).