After awhile, the principles behind the computations become clear, and there's no better way to accomplish this than by understanding the research purpose of statistics. Without statistics, all you're doing is making educated guesses. In social science, that may seem like all that's necessary, since we're studying the obvious anyway. However, there's a difference between something socially, or meaningfully significant, and something statistically significant .
Statistical significance is first of all, short and simple.
You communicate as much with just one number as a paragraph of description. Some people don't like statistics because of this reductionism, but it's become the settled way researchers communicate with one another. Secondly, statistical significance is what policy and decision making is based on. Policymakers will dismiss anything nonstatistical as anecdotal evidence. Anecdotal means interesting and amusing, but hardly serious enough to be published or promulgated.