Stats: Data and Models, Second Canadian Edition (2nd Edition)

Book Preface

Statistics gets no respect. People say things like, “you can prove anything with Statistics.” People will write off a claim based on data  as “just a statistical trick.” And Statistics courses don’t have the reputation of being students’ first choice for a fun elective.  But Statistics can be fun, though you might not guess it from some of the book covers popping up now and then at bookstores, with titles like Statistics for the Terrified and Statistics without Tears. Well, we certainly hope to calm your fears and hold back the tears while helping you learn to think more clearly, critically, and statistically with data. This is a book about understanding the world by using data. So we’d better start by understanding data. There’s more to that than you might have thought.