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Preface

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 June 2012

Anthony Woods
Affiliation:
University of Reading
Paul Fletcher
Affiliation:
University of Reading
Arthur Hughes
Affiliation:
University of Reading
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Summary

This book began with initial contacts between linguists (Hughes and Fletcher) and a statistician (Woods) over specific research problems in first and second language learning, and testing. These contacts led to an increasing awareness of the relevance of statistics for other areas in linguistics and applied linguistics, and of the responsibility of those working in such areas to subject their quantitative data to the same kind of statistical scrutiny as other researchers in the social sciences. In time, students in linguistics made increasing use of the Advisory Service provided by the Department of Applied Statistics at Reading. It soon became clear that the dialogue between statistician and student linguist, if it was to be maximally useful, required an awareness of basic statistical concepts on the student's part. The next step, then, was the setting up of a course in statistics for linguistics students (taught by Woods). This is essentially the book of the course, and reflects our joint views on what linguistics students who want to use statistics with their data need to know.

There are two main differences between this and other introductory textbooks in statistics for linguists. First, the portion of the book devoted to probability and statistical inference is considerable. In order to elucidate the sample–population relationship, we consider in some detail basic notions of probability, of statistical modelling, and (using the normal distribution as an example of a statistical model) of the problem of estimating population values from sample estimates.

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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 1986

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  • Preface
  • Anthony Woods, University of Reading, Paul Fletcher, University of Reading, Arthur Hughes, University of Reading
  • Book: Statistics in Language Studies
  • Online publication: 05 June 2012
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139165891.001
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  • Preface
  • Anthony Woods, University of Reading, Paul Fletcher, University of Reading, Arthur Hughes, University of Reading
  • Book: Statistics in Language Studies
  • Online publication: 05 June 2012
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139165891.001
Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Preface
  • Anthony Woods, University of Reading, Paul Fletcher, University of Reading, Arthur Hughes, University of Reading
  • Book: Statistics in Language Studies
  • Online publication: 05 June 2012
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139165891.001
Available formats
×