Introductory Statistics, Global Edition 10th Edition

Book Preface

Using and understanding statistics and statistical procedures have become required skills in virtually every profession and academic discipline. The purpose of this book is to help students master basic statistical concepts and techniques and to provide real-life opportunities for applying them

Audience and Approach

ntroductory Statistics is intended for one- or two-semester courses or for quarter-system courses. Instructors can easily fit the text to the pace and depth they prefer. Introductory high school algebra is a sufficient prerequisite.
Although mathematically and statistically sound (the author has also written books at the senior and graduate levels), the approach does not require students to examine complex concepts. Rather, the material is presented in a natural and intuitive way. Simply stated, students will find this book’s presentation of introductory statistics easy to understand.

About This Book

ntroductory Statistics presents the fundamentals of statistics, featuring data production and data analysis. Data exploration is emphasized as an integral prelude to statistical inference.
This edition of Introductory Statistics continues the book’s tradition of being on the cutting edge of statistical pedagogy, technology, and data analysis. It includes hundreds of new and updated exercises with real data from journals, magazines, newspapers, and websites.
The following Guidelines for Assessment and Instruction in Statistics Education (GAISE), funded and endorsed by the American Statistical Association, are supported and adhered to in Introductory Statistics:
Emphasize statistical literacy and develop statistical thinking.
Use real data.
Stress conceptual understanding rather than mere knowledge of procedures.
Foster active learning in the classroom.
Use technology for developing conceptual understanding and analyzing data.
Use assessments to improve and evaluate student learning

Changes in the Tenth Edition

he goal for this edition was to create an even more flexible and user-friendly book, to provide several new step-by-step procedures for making statistical analyses easier to apply, to add a fourth category of exercises, to expand the use of technology for developing understanding and analyzing data, and to refurbish the exercises. Several important revisions are presented as follows.

New! New Case Studies. Fifty percent of the chapter-opening case studies have been replaced.

New! New and Revised Exercises. This edition contains more than 3000 high-quality exercises, which far exceeds what is found in typical introductory statistics books. Over 35% of the exercises are new, updated, or modified.

New! WeissStats Resource Site. The WeissStats Resource Site (aka WeissStats site) provides an extensive array of resources for both instructors and students, including additional topics, applets, all data sets from the book in multiple formats, a procedures booklet, and technology appendixes. In addition to several new items, the site offers universal access to those items formerly included on the WeissStats CD. Refer to the table of contents for a brief list of the contents of the WeissStats site or visit the site at www.pearsonglobaleditions.com/weiss. Note: Resources for instructors only are available on the Instructor Resource Center at www.pearsonglobaleditions.com/weiss.

New! Chebyshev’s Rule and the Empirical Rule. A new (optional) section of Chapter 3 has been added that is dedicated to an examination of Chebyshev’s rule and the empirical rule. The empirical rule is further examined in Chapter 6 when the normal distribution is discussed.

New! Quartiles. The method for calculating quartiles has been modified to make it more easily accessible to students. Furthermore, a dedicated procedure that provides a step-by-step method for finding the quartiles of a data set has been included.

Revised! Distribution Shapes. The material on distribution shapes in Section 2.4 has been significantly modified and clarified. Students will find this revised approach easier to understand and apply.
Revised! Regression Analysis. Major improvements have been made to the chapter on Descriptive Methods in Regression and Correlation. These improvements include a comprehensivediscussionofscatterplots,asimplerintroduction to the least-squares criterion, and easier introductory examples for the regression equation, the sums of squares and coefficient of determination, and the linear correlation coefficient.
Expanded! Warm-up Exercises. In this edition, hundreds of “warm-up” exercises have been added. These exercises provide context-free problems that allow students to concentrate solely on the relevant concepts before moving on to applied exercises.
Expanded! Density Curves. The discussion of density curves has been significantly expanded and now includes several examples and many more exercises.
Expanded! Type II Error Probabilities and Power.
Section 9.7, which covers Type II error probabilities and power, has undergone major revision, including increased visuals and the addition of procedures for calculating Type II error probabilities and for constructing power curves.
Note: See the Technology section of this preface for a discussion of technology additions, revisions, and improvements.