Source
r/statistics•
ReaperOverload

[Q] Book recommendations to learn basic statistics so I can help my girlfriend

Question

My girlfriend will start going to university for psychology in a few months, and part of that will be Statistics 1 - 3. She's very afraid of it because of all the maths, but I personally believe everybody is able to do/learn math, most people are just in a bad mindset and had teachers that didn't work for them.

I'd like to get a book that teaches me statistics so I can help her while she's going through the courses and am looking for recommendations on cheapish books to get.

Posted Nov 8, 2019, 12:49 PM UTC

526
moosetopenguin•

Tell your girlfriend to go see the professor or teaching assistants if she has questions. For most professors, it says a lot if you see them in person for help. If she's going to a larger university and her class has lots of students, then she'll also have the option to ask TAs for homework help.

At the end of the day, though, your girlfriend needs to do this on her own. I tutored fellow students in math and stats during university and the one thing I refused to do was give them the answer. I helped them work to get the answer because, otherwise, they'll never learn.

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ReaperOverloadOP•

I have helped classmates often with math throughout school/university and I agree with not telling people the answer for the same reason - that's not how people learn something. I always tried my best to teach the way to get to the solution.

I will encourage her to seek out help if she needs it, but I'd like to be able to help her too as there's always a possibility of her professor not being good at teaching/explaining at all.

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moosetopenguin•

The thing is...there's no book that covers all the basics, as far as I know, and it'll depend on the material in your girlfriend's course. The most basic is "Statistics for Dummies" but unless we know the content covered in her course, it'll be difficult to recommend the right book to help you learn what she's learning.

I do still stand by my original point, though, that your girlfriend needs to do this on her own. It's different tutoring someone you strongly care about vs a fellow student to whom you have no significant attachment.

4
dalemiamor•

Really? You wanna learn statistics so you can help her? I’m sorry, but you gotta do you, mr nice guy

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ReaperOverloadOP•

I'm about a third through my CS bachelor's degree.

My girlfriend got some of the first lectures from people who have started her psychology program this semester, and it all looks like stuff I already know, so far. I've also really enjoyed helping people with math throughout my school life, so this seemed like something I'd really enjoy doing

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no_condoments•

If you're doing CS, you'll benefit substantially from statistics anyway. It'll help with bloom filters, genetic algorithms, software engineering for machine learning, and random data generation for unit/integration testing.

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ReaperOverloadOP•

Yeah, exactly. I really enjoyed the theoretical modules and the database module I had so far, so statistics is probably of great interest to me anyway.

Probably should have mentioned this in the OP..

3
no_condoments•

If only it were possible to edit posts......

1
michela_9•

What your girlfriend is feeling is very normal. However, you learning stats to teach your girlfriend probably won’t benefit her. Your girlfriend would benefit more from attending all lectures/taking good notes, meeting the prof at office hours, completing the assignments, redoing any questions she gets wrong on the assignments, and attending a study group.

That being said, there are a lot of free PDF textbooks for introductory stats in social sciences. They all cover the same material. I think SPSS is mainly used for psych

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yngvizzle•

I disagree, if OP has a good aptitude for maths, then their girlfriend might be motivated to work more by having someone patient by her side while she is struggling with the stats. Though this will require OP to not take control and "help" their girlfriend by showing the solution to all the problems.

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moosetopenguin•

It's different tutoring someone who you genuinely care about. You're less likely to be "tough" (in a good way) because you're going to take their feelings into consideration, no matter what you tell yourself. I'm just speaking from personal experience when I was a tutor at my university. It was much harder to be a good tutor for a close friend or significant other than it was for a random fellow student.

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not_really_redditing•

I haven't tutored people in any formal setting, but I have worked with a flat mate on stats over the course of a stats class. There was some difficulty given that I cared about my friend and didn't want to hurt feelings. But I tried to keep in mind that if I really wanted the best outcome, sometimes that meant that frustration, or anger, or even the occasional tear, was okay. The fact that we were in the same apartment meant that it was mostly small doses of help focused on one or two questions, and occasionally longer times talking about what the hell p-values are and what they have to do with test statistics. It also meant that we could stall out on a subject and revisit it later. It was tough at times, but in the end my friend was very grateful for the help, and neither their grade nor our friendship suffered for it.

So yes, it's hard, but no it's not impossible. You have to practice a bit of tough love.

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dmlane•

This one focuses on topics covered in introduction to psychological statistics courses.

2
irrelativetheory•

Look at the syllabi for past years for those courses online. That's my recommendation. You might even find past years' homeworks and lecture notes. Good luck! Make sure you are only one support part of the chain and not doing their homework!

1
antiquemule•

I suggest "the cartoon book of statistics" and Statistics for Dummies" I and II. They both teach stats in a gentle, amusing way. Good preparation for the "real deal". These are maybe more for your GF than for you. I'm sure there'll be plenty more "hard ass" suggestions.

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techwizrd•

If she is comfortable with algebra at least, I recommend The Statistical Sleuth by Fred Ramsey. It has the math and good, consistent notation but it's chock full of examples and takes an applied approach towards statistics.

If she finds she enjoys the math and wants a good understanding of probability (not statistics), I recommend A First Course in Probability by Sheldon Ross. Beware though: this book requires a good understanding of calculus.

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georgialune•

I’m in the same boat, advanced stats’s course at uni as someone who was never good at math. Seeking out guidance from my professors during office hours has been invaluable, and also voice recording all lectures and replaying them later. There isn’t one book that will teach you all she needs to know, especially for behavioral stats which is what she’ll be learning

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editorijsmi•

You can suggest the following book

Essentials of Bio-Statistics: An overview with the help of Software https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07GRBXX7D E-book

ISBN: 978-1723712074

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Sorry_I_Zoned_Out•

Naked Statistics is great.

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AAAartisan•

Start here.

And then here.

Best class I ever took in my undergrad program.

If you really get into standard deviations and the bell curve, you'll see that so much of everything operates and ends up distributed this way. You can even predict general results.

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efrique•

Some basic stats books that will cover the sort of material she'll need to begin with:

Introduction to the Practice of Statistics, Moore&McCabe. (Do not get any recent edition with more than those two authors; you want 5th edition or earlier)

Statistics, Freedman, Pisani and Purves.

You may need more later.

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CanYouPleaseChill•

Get her a copy of Intuitive Biostatistics: A Nonmathematical Guide to Statistical Thinking by Harvey Motulsky. Phenomenal book that covers all sorts of common pitfalls in thinking about statistics while explaining the basics better than anything I’ve read.

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synysterbates•

Looking for book recommendations to learn basic statistics so I can help this guy help his girlfriend

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eric_he•

As far as introductory texts go, they are almost all the same. Try to see if you can get the textbook her class will use and go from there. Best of luck to both of you.

Of course your goal should mainly be to convince your girlfriend that she can learn this herself rather than to directly “teach” everything to her, but unlike what the other commenters in the thread are suggesting, I think your girlfriend can greatly benefit from having a tutor to help her work through both difficult problems and her own insecurities on mathematical topics!

0
itsdrjekyll•

It really depends on how they learn statistics and which software they use at her university. Overall, there is not very much actual maths needed for BA stats classes. I really liked maths in school and took advanced classes and then didn't enjoy statistics in the beginning, because it was so much less "mathy".

I quite nice entry book for applying stats in Psychology is from Andy Field: Discovering statistics using IBM SPSS or Discovering statistics using R (both versions exist). He writes in a fun way and makes stats accessible for people who are not into it.

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