Statistics? Nope! ... JAMOVI? Yeap!

Statistics is considered to be the most popular among the other mathematical sciences (like logic, calculus, algebra, etc.) because it is so strongly linked with “hands-on” experimentation, and it can be applied to different scientific areas, spanning from physics and computer science (applied), to psychology and sociology (theoretical). Statistics education is an emerging field that grew out of different disciplines and is currently establishing itself as a unique field that is devoted to the improvement of teaching and learning statistics at all educational levels.

Personally, I met and I understood how statistics works, on my master studies (although I have a bachelor in mathematics!!!), where I needed to apply statistics on my research data. This made me realise that theory is good but it’s incomplete without the knowledge of how it can be applied to real world problems. This made me consider very seriously how to bridge theory and applied skills to a single module.

Initially, this seemed pretty easy, since theory is there, SPSS is there, so let’s do it! However, inside the classroom you may face many unpredictable problems…

“I cannot download SPSS”
“Sir, SPSS is not loading”
“My computer is very slow!!!”
“I cannot activate the license”
“Oh crap! My computer has crashed and it needs to be restarted”

For one moment, I thought to move all students inside a lab, but hopefully this was just for a moment! You know, inside the lab you can see a step-by-step tutorial, you can repeat it for once or twice maximum and that’s it! You cannot practice, and don’t forget…repetition is the mother of all skills[1]. So that’s why I was called to find a statistical software that would be reliable (giving the same results as SPSS), it’s open (so anyone can download it for free) and it’s lightweight (so even the old computers can run it). For this reason, I had to get quickly an advice from my mentor, so I knock her door (www.google.com) and asked “free statistical software”. After a lot of research, I concluded in JAMOVI (https://www.jamovi.org/) and I haven’t regret it so far!

YOU SHOULD TRY JAMOVI!!!

Considering that the knowledge should be open and spread around, I have informed my colleagues and our Level 3 students about this discovery, because I knew that they were also facing problems with SPSS, and especially students who had to finish their dissertations. I was really shocked about how fast they switched to JAMOVI and started to flood my mailbox with questions about how they can run this or the other analysis.

Then the decision was taken….I SHOULD DEVELOP A JAMOVI MODULE FOR ALL…, and I was really motivated by the word ALL. I want to develop something for all the CITY College community that will actually help both the students and my colleagues in all the departments. For this reason, and considering my limited free time, I knocked again my mentor’s door… “JAMOVI tutorials”, where I found a lot of interesting staff accompanied with a complete textbook, and guess… All of them are open!!!

The next steps were fast and easy. Make a new google classroom an import all the materials there in a good organised way.

Below you can find the course Table of Contents

GETTING STARTED
· Welcome {1:26}
· Installing jamovi {0:34}
· Navigating jamovi {5:20}
· Sample data {2:01}
· Sharing files {1:32}
· Sharing with OSF.io {3:18}
· jamovi modules {4:11}
· The jmv package for R {5:03}
WRANGLING DATA
· Wrangling data: chapter overview {1:30}
· Entering data {2:04}
· Importing data {4:51}
· Variable types & labels {6:10}
· Computing means {3:54}
· Computing z-scores {1:56}
· Transforming scores to categories {3:42}
· Filtering cases {8:26}
EXPLORATION
· Exploration: chapter overview {1:06}
· Descriptive statistics {5:27}
· Histograms {4:25}
· Density plots {3:23}
· Box plots {3:26}
· Violin plots {2:38}
· Dot plots {3:07}
· Bar plots {3:28}
· Exporting tables & plots {9:25}
T-TESTS
· t-tests: chapter overview {1:14}
· Independent-samples t-test {6:40}
· Paired-samples t-test {5:13}
· One-sample t-test {7:08}
ANOVA
· ANOVA: chapter overview {1:58}
· ANOVA {7:03}
· Repeated-measures ANOVA {9:50}
· ANCOVA {6:40}
· MANCOVA {7:13}
· Kruskal-Wallis test {6:00}
· Friedman test {5:30}
REGRESSION
· Regression: chapter overview {2:08}
· Correlation matrix {7:32}
· Linear regression {6:14}
· Variable entry {7:15}
· Regression diagnostics {6:20}
· Binomial logistic regression {9:01}
· Multinomial logistic regression {8:48}
· Ordinal logistic regression {8:16}
FREQUENCIES
· Frequencies: chapter overview {2:19}
· Binomial test {4:53}
· Chi-squared goodness-of-fit {6:27}
· Chi-squared test of association {5:21}
· McNemar test {4:54}
· Log-linear regression {5:46}
FACTOR
· Factor: chapter overview {1:50}
· Reliability analysis {7:26}
· Principal component analysis {7:58}
· Exploratory factor analysis {7:35}
· Confirmatory factor analysis {8:53}
CONCLUSION
· Next steps {5:59}

So, closing this post, I would really like to warmly invite ALL the CITY College students and staff to join the JAMOVI classroom…

https://classroom.google.com/c/NDAyNTYxNDIwODk2?cjc=hy2wdv3
code: hy2wdv3

I hope you find it helpful and enjoy it!

Dr. Manousos Klados
Associate Professor
Department of Psychology

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[1] This phrase is attributed to Tony Robbins, however ancient Greeks and Romans have realised that centuries ago… “Επανάληψις, μήτηρ πάσης μαθήσεως” or Repetitio est mater studiorum said by Greeks and Romans respectively.