Lies, Damn Lies and Statistics!  How to avoid the most common statistical issues in PER.

The proliferation of sophisticated quantitative analysis within PER offers many exciting opportunities, but also several significant challenges. It is easy to be overwhelmed or intimidated by these methods, both when writing and when reviewing articles. During this talk, we will emphasize the importance of "statistical sense making" in PER. In particular, we will argue that a conceptual understanding of the expression stderr= σ/sqrt(N) allows you to determine the appropriate level of statistical analysis as well as the claims that analysis supports.