Friday, November 22, 2024
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Course Schedule for 2016

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Monday Morning

  • Outline of the Course Objectives and Logistics
  • Student introductions and presentation of their interests in quantitative approaches
  • Introduction to Quantification and Statistics

Reading

Bernard, HR. (2011) “Chapter 20. Univariate Analysis.” In: Research Methods in Anthropology. Altamira Press.

Dressler (2015) “Introduction”. In: The Five Things you Need to Know about Statistics.

Charnley, Susan and William H. Durham (2010). “Anthropology and environmental policy: What counts?.” American Anthropologist 112(3): 397-415.

Chibnik, Michael (1999). “Quantification and statistics in six anthropology journals.” Field Methods 11(2): 146-157.

Monday Afternoon

  • Scale Construction, Reliability and Validity
  • Exercise: how plugged in are you?
  • Introduction to R&R Commander

Reading

Bernard (2011). Chapter 11. Scales and Scaling. In: Research Methods in Anthropology. Altamira Press.

Fox J. (2012). Getting started with the R Commander, v. 1-9.1. (Accessible from R Commander under the help menu).

Other helpful R references

Field, Andy. Chapter 3. The R Environment. Discovering Statistics Using R/SPSS.

Baron, J. (n.d.) R reference card

Karp, N. (2010) R Commander: an introduction.

Paradis, E. (n.d.) R for Beginners.

Tuesday Morning

  • Describing and Visualizing Quantitative Data
  • Exercise: The good and bad of figures
  • Means and Distributions
  • Scatterplots and Correlations

Reading

Bernard, HR. (2011) “Chapter 20. Univariate Analysis.” In: Research Methods in Anthropology. Altamira Press.

Dressler (2015) “Chapter 1” & “Chapter 2”. In: The Five Things you Need to Know about Statistics.

Tufte, ER (2001). “Graphical Excellence.” In: The Visual Display of Quantitative Information. Graphics P: Cheshire Court, CT.

Tuesday Afternoon

  • Multi-dimensional Scaling
  • Cluster Analysis
  • Hierarchical cluster analysis

Reading

Bernard, HR (2011). Analyzing Pile Sort Data. In: Research Methods in Anthropology. Altamira Press. P. 349-371..

Gravlee, Clarence C (2005). “Ethnic classification in southeastern Puerto Rico: the cultural model of “color”.” Social Forces 83(3): 949-970.

Sturrock, Kenneth and Jorge Rocha (2000). “A multidimensional scaling stress evaluation table.” Field Methods. 12(1):49-60.

Marzillier, Sarah and Graham Davey (2004). “The emotional profiling of disgust?eliciting stimuli: Evidence for primary and complex disgusts.” Cognition and Emotion 18(3): 313-336.

Wednesday Morning

  • Quantitative models, predictions and inferences
  • What is a test?
  • Samples and populations, Statistics and parameters
  • Simple models and tests: fairplay, infanticide and voting

Reading

Dressler (2015) “Chapter 3”. In: The Five Things you Need to Know about Statistics.

Bernard, HR (2011). Chapter 21. Bivariate Analysis: Testing Relations. In: Research Methods in Anthropology. Altamira Press. P. 493-532.

Bernard, HR (2011). Chapters 5-6. Sampling I & II. In: Research Methods in Anthropology. Altamira Press. P. 113-142.

Wednesday Afternoon

  • Are two groups different? Parametric and non-parametric tests
  • Is one variable correlated with another? Parameter and non-parametric tests

Reading

Dressler (2015) “Chapter 4” & “Chapter 5”. In: The Five Things you Need to Know about Statistics.

Bernard, HR (2011). “Chapter 21. Bivariate Analysis: Testing Relations.” In: Research Methods in Anthropology. Altamira Press. P. 493-532.

Thursday Morning

  • Linear regression
      • Underlying theory
      Implementation
      Interpretation
      Diagnostics

Reading

Dressler (2015) “Chapter 6 through 8”. In: The Five Things you Need to Know about Statistics.

Bernard, HR (2011). Chapter 22. Multivariate Analysis. In: Research Methods in Anthropology. Altamira Press. P. 533-558.

Thursday Afternoon

  • Cultural consensus Model
      • Underlying theory
      Implementation
      Interpretation
      Diagnostics
  • Predicting Agreement

Reading

Weller, Susan C. (2007). “Cultural consensus theory: Applications and frequently asked questions.” Field methods 19(4): 339-368.

Aunger, Robert and A. Kimball Romney (1999). “Culture As Consensus: Against Idealism/Contra Consensus; Cultural Consensus as as a Statistical Model.” Current anthropology 40(S1): S93-S115.

Bernard, HR (2011). “Cultural Consensus Analysis.” In: Research Methods in Anthropology. Altamira Press. P. 371-385.

Romney, Kimball (1999). “Culture consensus as a statistical model.” Current Anthropology 40 (1999): S103-S115.

Reading

Boster, James S. (1986). “Exchange of varieties and information between Aguaruna manioc cultivators.” American Anthropologist 88(2): 428-436.

Hruschka, DJ and JN Maupin (2012). “Competence, Agreement, and Luck: Testing Whether Some People Agree More with a Cultural Truth than Do Others.” Field Methods (2012).

Alvard, Michael S. (2003). “Kinship, lineage, and an evolutionary perspective on cooperative hunting groups in Indonesia.” Human Nature 14(2): 129-163.

Friday Afternoon

  • Bringing it all together
  • Extending to other distributions and kinds of data
  • Opportunities and challenges in teaching statistics to anthropology students

Required Book

We will be using Bill Dressler’s accessible introduction to statistics.

Dressler, W. The Five Things you Need to Know about Statistics. Left Coast Press, 201

We will also be using select chapters from Bernard’s book on research methods in anthropology. It is a comprehensive resource for methods in anthropology and should be part of any instructor’s library. You may use an earlier version of the book if you have one already.

Bernard, H. Russell. Research methods in anthropology: Qualitative and quantitative approaches. Altamira press, 2011.

The following book is not required, but may be a useful resource:

Newton, Rae R., and Kjell Erik Rudestam. Your statistical consultant: Answers to your data analysis questions. Sage Publications, Incorporated, 1999.

Finally, if you will be teaching statistics in the future:

We recommend you take a look at either of Andy Field’s Discovering Statistics Using… textbooks. There are two versions: an SPSS version and an R version; choose the one appropriate to the software you have available. Field writes in a very accessible manner and does a good job of taking the intimidation factor out of statistics. (If we had a license for SPSS for this course we’d probably be using his SPSS text book. We don’t require the R version because it seems excessive to require a $70 book when most people have access to SPSS back home.)