About

My name is Ken Tangen. I live in southern California (south of Disneyland, just before you hit the beach). But I have students from all over the world.

I’m a teacher and user of statistics. I don’t study its history, prove its theorems or generate new techniques. I’m not a mathematician, statistician or theoritian. I’m a practitioner, not a believer.

I’m also a minimalist. I am generally opposed to relying too heavily on statistics. I think sampling is too often confused with laziness. I’m opposed to letting statistics determine who gets what question on a test (aka, item response theory). And I’m against the overreliance “scientific management” puts on numbers, without much thought to people.

Yet I’m not a blind user. I have my favorites, and my less than favorites. I like multiple regression better than ANOVAs (I like continuous data). I don’t like chi square tests. I think regressions work better to answer the same questions, and if your data doesn’t meet the assumptions for doing regression, redo your study. Don’t lower your standards.

As you can tell, I’m opinioned, sometimes flat-out wrong, and not the most sophisticated mathematician in the world. So I focus on making statistics assessable. I work really hard at explaining statistics to anyone who wants to learn.

And, I believe you can learn. You can and should learn the basics of statistics. It will help you understand what other people are trying to sell you. It will make research more assessable and less mysterious. It will make you stop saying “studies say…” and make you ask questions about which studies, who was studied and what assumptions were made.

In case you’re wondering, my degrees are in psychology. Specifically, I earned a BA in psychology, a masters in counseling psychology, and a PhD in educational psychology. But mostly, I think of myself as a cognitive scientist. Or more simply as a teacher.

If you are a statistician or mathematician who is more knowledgeable than me (which wouldn’t be hard), let me enlist your help. When you find something I’ve screwed up, let me know. I have very little ego when it comes to helping others. So when you have a suggestion, send on to me. My students and I will thank you.