Question 19
ComprehensionJAMB 1991 Passage IV: A statistics textbook
Undergraduate students in Psychology and Education come to their first course in statistics with diverse expectations of and backgrounds in mathematics. Some have considerable formal training and quantitative aptitude and look forward to learning statistics. Others — perhaps the majority, including some of those who aspire to postgraduate studies — are less confident in their quantitative skills. They regard a course in statistics as a necessary evil for the understanding or carrying out of research in their chosen fields, but an evil nonetheless.
The third edition, like its predecessor, is directed primarily at the latter audience it was written with the conviction that statistical concepts can be described simply without loss of accuracy and that understanding of statistical techniques as research tools can be effectively promoted by discussing them within the context of application to concrete data rather than as pure abstractions. Further, its contents are limited to those statistical techniques that are widely used in the literature of Psychology and to the principles underlying them. The changes that have been made in this edition reflect both the results of our teaching experience and the increasing prominence being given by statisticians to certain topics. Thus our discussion of some procedures, particularly those in the realm of descriptive statistics, which students grasp easily, have been shortened or rearranged. The treatment of other topics has been expanded. Greater emphasis has been placed on sampling theory, hypothesis testing, and the notion of statistical power.
The third edition, like its predecessor, is directed primarily at the latter audience it was written with the conviction that statistical concepts can be described simply without loss of accuracy and that understanding of statistical techniques as research tools can be effectively promoted by discussing them within the context of application to concrete data rather than as pure abstractions. Further, its contents are limited to those statistical techniques that are widely used in the literature of Psychology and to the principles underlying them. The changes that have been made in this edition reflect both the results of our teaching experience and the increasing prominence being given by statisticians to certain topics. Thus our discussion of some procedures, particularly those in the realm of descriptive statistics, which students grasp easily, have been shortened or rearranged. The treatment of other topics has been expanded. Greater emphasis has been placed on sampling theory, hypothesis testing, and the notion of statistical power.
The changes that were made in the book were motivated by
- A.professional experience and popularity of topics
- B.teaching experience and statisticians' views of some topics
- C.the examination results of previous generation of students
- D.the need to avoid areas which students grasp easily
Show the answer and explanation
Answer: B (teaching experience and statisticians' views of some topics)
Explanation
The passage says the changes reflect the authors' teaching experience and the prominence statisticians give to certain topics.