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Advice neededStatistics for beginners
I have some time on my hands and would like to learn more about statistics. I need an online course that accommodates students with basic (GCSE) mathematical knowledge. I do okay in mathematics, but I tend to find it rather counter-intuitive. I'm more of a history-literature-philosophy kind of person.
Does anyone know of a course that might suit me? All recommendations gratefully received!
Hello fellow history-literature-philosophy kind of person trying to learn more about statistics!
The first question you might ask yourself is do you want to actually do statistics -- that is, do you want to manipulate data sets and make inferences from them? Or do you want to learn more about the kinds of things other people are doing with statistics -- for instance, do you want to be able to read social science academic papers and understand how the authors drew their conclusions? Those are two different goals.
If you actually want to do statistics, Khan Academy is great. They offer a few different options:
High School Statistics -- this is a basic class with no challenging math
Statistics & Probability -- also basic, low math, includes some predictive material
AP/College Statistics -- math load higher but no calculus. Very comprehensive! There's also a "Get Ready for AP Statistics" mini class to get you prepped (or see if it's going to involve math beyond what you're comfortable with)
Coursera also offers an elementary statistics class (from Stanford), which you can audit for free. I am not sure if you can access the problem sets if you are auditing, though.
https://www.coursera.org/learn/stanford-statistics
If you are more interested in conceptual statistics and not necessarily in working problems, I can enthusiastically recommend two channels on YouTube that will give you a good grounding. Although they are free YT channels, both organize their material into sequenced episodes, so watching them feels like a "class":
Crash Course Statistics -- this channel is uniformly excellent for giving accurate high-level overview of STEM classes
Simple Learning Pro -- outstanding animations of basic statistics concepts https://youtu.be/MXaJ7sa7q-8
I tried to scratch this itch by taking a stats class at my local community college...and ended up learning almost everything from the resources I listed above, ha.
Thanks, those are great resources.
I would like to be able to do both, I think.
If you don't want credit for a course, and just want to learn, Dummies has a whole series of them.
https://www.dummies.com/category/books/statistics-33728/
Dummies would be good, but I think I want an online course. If that doesn't work out, I'll look into the Dummies series.
You have lots of good recommendations for specific sources in this thread. I will just add that people I know who didn’t like / do well in math once abstract variables came in (algebra and beyond) love statistics because it’s based on tangible data. It also helps to understand a lot of phenomena that affect our day-to-day. Good luck!