Monthly Video Series: Descriptive Statistics

As part of the dissemination and awareness process we'll be sharing videos from external sources.
The following video is from the Khan Academy, and walks through how to calculate a number of descriptive statistics; mean, mode, median.

These measure averages and are regularly used as the starting point in understanding the dataset.



As the data set becomes larger, and more complex calculating by hand becomes more problematic (and prone to errors). Therefore, you can calculate the descriptive statistics using a spreadsheet. The following (silent) video walks through how to calculate a number of different descriptive statistics using Google Spreadsheets.


If you have any questions, please contact Learning Services (learningservices@ucs.ac.uk)

Book Review: Practical Statistics for Nursing and Health Care

As part of our support to course teams I've been working with Karen Lewis to explore what textbooks are available in the Library which map to the topics she'll be covering in her sessions. The intention is to discipline specific texts to help students connect with the topic, as opposed to general statistics books which might seem a little abstract. A textbook which is really good for Nursing and Health Care is;

Practical statistics for nursing and health care (stsk 519.502461 FOW)

This maps to her curriculum very neatly. For instance;

• Processing data (Scales of measurement, nominal, ordinal, interval) is in Chapter 3
• Measuring the Average (mean, mode, median) is Chapter 7
• Measuring variability (range, standard deviation, alternatives and interpretations) is Chapter 8
• Measuring Correlations (meaning, strength, significance and calculation) is Chapter 13