Statistically Excellent: the free eBook by Mike Arieh Medina

I wish I had studied inferential statistics in high school.

I wish I had invented linear regression.

Or renamed the Fisher’s test into Mike’s test.

I guess that will never happen. It’s too late.

Statistics are however growing into a more diverse field in terms of application: natural sciences, social sciences, marketing research, political science.

The fact that statistical software packages intensified the use of statistics in the decision making process in businesses, the academe, and even in the government makes it even more challenging.

These software packages however are expensive. Colleges and universities in fact spend almost a million pesos in order to get a licensed version of these programs.

Good News! You know MS Excel right? The Microsoft Office application composed of rows and columns. This is mainly used for spreadsheets solutions in the finance department. I’m telling you it’s also a statistical data analysis tool. No! I’m not only referring to graphs and charts. The real deal: inferential statistics, the one used for hypothesis testing.

Here’s an eBook I wrote and published for free.

It’s called Statistically Excellent: Inferential Statistics using MS Excel 2007.

This is not however an eBook for interpreting statistical results, it’s about computing it, without using your scientific calculator, tons of scratch paper, and pages of equations.

It’s small enough to email to your friends or maybe post in your Facebook wall.

Anyway here’s the link again (statex.pdf)

Read more »

How to perform descriptive statistics using MS Excel

Here’s a way to do some descriptive statistics using the MS Excel Analysis ToolPak add-in.

1. Encode your data vertically in a worksheet.

2. Click the Data tab, and then click the Data Analysis command icon. If you cannot see the Data Analysis command in your Excel application, read the previous post to learn how to load the Analysis ToolPak add-in.

3. In the Data Analysis dialogue box, select descriptive statistics, and then click Ok.

4. In the Descriptive Analysis dialogue box, enter the input range and the output range values, check the descriptive statistics you wish to be computed (summary statistics, confidence level, etc.) and then click Ok. Note: If you have included the column title in the input range, check Labels in first row.

5. The results will be displayed in the output range you have specified.

I've finished writing an eBook for inferential statistics using MS Excel. And you know what? You can get it free here in Grad School Jungle..

Read more »

How to load the MS Excel add-in for data analysis

The Analysis ToolPak is a Microsoft Office Excel add-in. This is a program that is available when you install Microsoft Office or Excel. This add-in is an indispensable tool for data analysis be it for descriptive or inferential statistics for your data set. After installing MS Office however, you don’t see it in the Data tab during your first use. In order to use it in Excel you need to load it first. 

1.Once you have opened MS Excel, click the Microsoft Office Button, and then click Excel Options at the lower left part of the dialogue box.

2.Click Add-Ins found in the left panel of the dialogue box, and then in the Manage box found at the lower part, select Excel Add-ins, then click Go.

3.In the Add-Ins available dialogue box, click the check box for the Analysis ToolPak, and then click OK.

Note:  If Analysis ToolPak is not found in the Add-Ins available dialogue box, click Browse to locate it.

If you get a notification that the Analysis ToolPak is not currently installed on your computer, click Yes to install it.

4.After you have loaded  the Analysis ToolPak, the Data Analysis icon will now be available in the Analysis group on the Data tab.

Let’s try how this add-in works! Read the next post to try some simple descriptive statistics using the Data Analysis command.

Read more »

Numb3rs, a TV series recommended for students in research and statistics

I’ve watched this TV series called Numb3rs in Cable TV a few years ago and I’ve been hooked to each episode ever since. It’s about two brothers, the older one an FBI agent who constantly consults his younger brother, a math professor, in solving crimes. Each crime is solved using different mathematical analysis tools be it on profiling criminals, predicting their movements, identifying locations of victims, or some IT stuff such as image enhancement of surveillance videos or hacking computer systems.

What hooked me is when I see such stuff as logistic regression, discriminant analysis, randomization, game theory, risk assessment, and other stuff I have encountered in grad school, being used in solving crimes. I have also been motivated of learning more on other analytical tools I have heard for the first time in the show such as Benford’s Law, the Voronoi Diagram, The Riemann Hypothesis, and lots of other stuff that inspires me more to learn math.

Numb3rs opening line for every episode:

We all use math every day; to predict weather, to tell time, to handle money. Math is more than formulas or equations; it's logic, it's rationality, it's using your mind to solve the biggest mysteries we know.

So if you’re a student enrolled in research or statistics right now, I recommend you watch the show in order to appreciate the power of numbers in solving society’s ills. This may motivate you to be more serious about the seemingly boring stuff called math. I haven’t followed the recent episodes lately since I’ve been busy with my online stuff but I think it’s still in AXN.

By the way here’s a description of the series from the Numb3rs Fan Site. 

Rob Morrow stars as FBI agent Don Eppes, who recruits his mathematical genius brother, Charlie (David Krumholtz), to help the Bureau solve a wide range of challenging crimes in Los Angeles. From two very different perspectives, the brothers take on the most confounding criminal cases, aided by Don's partner, Terry Lake (Sabrina Lloyd), and new FBI recruit David Sinclair (Alimi Ballard). Although their father, Alan (Judd Hirsch), is pleased to see his sons working together, he fears their competitive nature will lead to trouble. Charlie's colleague, physicist Dr. Larry Fleinhardt (Peter MacNicol), urges Charlie to focus more on his university studies than on FBI business. Inspired by actual events, NUMB3RS depicts how the confluence of police work and mathematics provides unexpected revelations and answers to the most perplexing criminal questions.

See also: Numb3rs Blog - This is a blog where a professor from Northeastern University's Math department posts mathematical comments on the television show "Numb3rs".

What's on your mind right now? You can share it with us using the comment link below.

Read more »