Dr. Govern Office: LA 2143 Office Hours:
Psychology 212.004, 212.005 Office Phone: 410-704-2372 T, Th, F 8:30-9:30.
Fall 2011 Psych Dept: 410-704-2634 also by appt
email: govern@towson.edu
BEHAVIORAL STATISTICS SYLLABUS
TEXT
Pagano, R. Understanding Statistics in the Behavioral Sciences. 9th ed. Wadsworth. You
wouldn’t miss much if you used the 8th edition.
COURSE CATALOG DESCRIPTION
Distributions and graphs, notation, levels of measurement, percentiles, measures of central tendency and variability,
principles of probability, the normal curve, standard scores, sampling theory, hypothesis testing, significance of
differences, correlation and prediction, Chi square, non-parametrics, one-way analysis of variance. Not open to those
who have successfully completed PSYC 111. Prerequisites: MATH 109 or higher except MATH 204. GenEd
I.C.
OBJECTIVES
Psychology 212 addresses the following learning goals identified by the American Psychological Association:
Goal 1: Students will learn the major concepts of statistics including conceptual knowledge of various statistical
procedures and when it is appropriate to use each one.
Goal 2: For various types of research design, students will learn to:
Use descriptive statistics to organize, simplify, and summarize data.
Compute and interpret various inferential statistics (including t, r, and F).
Goal 3: Students will learn to read, interpret, and critically evaluate the results and conclusions of statistics as
reported in research articles and the popular press.
ATTENDANCE
Roll is taken during each class period. Class attendance is strongly suggested because many topics covered in class
are not addressed in the textbook. (...and if you don't come to class, I'll make a note of it on your PERMANENT
RECORD CARD - wherever that is ...). Also, attendance will be considered when deciding whether a borderline
average will be assigned the higher or the lower course grade.
CLASS AND LABORATORY ASSIGNMENTS
You will be given several assignments to do outside of class. Some of these assignments will be related to the
laboratory work that we do, and others will be based on class and lecture material. Collectively, the homework
problems will be worth approximately 10 percent of your final grade. More importantly, these problems provide
excellent practice for the examination questions. Hopefully, students will quickly recognize that completing these
assignments is essential to learning the material, and that it is better to work on the problems throughout the course
than to either make an initial attempt before they are covered in class or not to make any attempt at all.
