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

Learning Services Resources for Maths Support

We'd just like to make you aware we have a large number of Maths support books which are available in the Library. These have been purchased to support the needs from across the various course teams, and account for difference starting points.

The book collection has been located with other academic skills resources, and are based in the PC Suite, near L107.

We'd encourage you to use these books as part of your self directed support. So once your lecturers have introduced and applied the maths, please pop across to the Library to access these resources.

Monthly Video Series: Correlation

As part of the dissemination and awareness process we'll be sharing videos from external sources. To start the process I've selected the Statistics 101 Course on YouTube, by Brandon Foltz (https://www.youtube.com/user/BCFoltz/videos). He regularly publishes videos around statistical techniques. I'll admit, these are more directed towards the final year / dissertation students.

The following video explores the concept of correlation. Given it is part of a series, the start makes reference to the previous video. Therefore, I'd suggest, sit back, relax and give it time.



Correlation is a very useful statistical test for exploring two data sets which have no causal relationship. Excel (and Google Spreadsheet) includes an inbuilt function for calculating correlation coefficient. The following video outlines how this is done.