The Practice of Statistics Fifth Edition

Book Preface

Statistical Thinking and You

The purpose of this book is to give you a working knowledge of the big ideas of statistics and of the methods used in solving statistical problems. Because data always come from a realworld context, doing statistics means more than just manipulating data. The Practice of Statistics (TPS), Fifth Edition, is full of data. Each set of data has some brief background to help you understand what the data say. We deliberately chose contexts and data sets in the examples and exercises to pique your interest.

TPS 5e is designed to be easy to read and easy to use. This book is written by current high school AP® Statistics teachers, for high school students. We aimed for clear, concise explanations and a conversational approach that would encourage you to read the book. We also tried to enhance both the visual appeal and the book’s clear organization in the layout of the pages. Be sure to take advantage of all that TPS 5e has to offer. You can learn a lot by reading the text, but you will develop deeper understanding by doing Activities and Data Explorations and answering the Check Your Understanding questions along the way. The walkthrough guide on pages xiv–xx gives you an inside look at the important features of the text.
You learn statistics best by doing statistical problems. This book offers many different types of problems for you to tackle.
• Section Exercises include paired odd- and even-numbered problems that test the same skill or concept from that section. There are also some multiple-choice questions to help prepare you for the AP® exam. Recycle and Review exercises at the end of each exercise set involve material you studied in previous sections.
• Chapter Review Exercises consist of free-response questions aligned to specific learning objectives from the chapter. Go through the list of learning objectives summarized in the Chapter Review and be sure you can say “I can do that” to each item. Then prove it by solving some problems.
• The AP® Statistics Practice Test at the end of each chapter will help you prepare for in-class exams. Each test has 10 to 12 multiple-choice questions and three freeresponse problems, very much in the style of the AP® exam.
• Finally, the Cumulative AP® Practice Tests after Chapters 4, 7, 10, and 12 provide challenging, cumulative multiple-choice and free-response questions like ones you might find on a midterm, final, or the AP® Statistics exam.
The main ideas of statistics, like the main ideas of any important subject, took a long time to discover and take some time to master. The basic principle of learning them is to be persistent.
Once you put it all together, statistics will help you make informed decisions based on data in your daily life.

TPS and AP® Statistics
The Practice of Statistics (TPS) was the first book written specifically for the Advanced Placement (AP®) Statistics course. Like the previous four editions, TPS 5e is organized to closely follow the AP® Statistics Course Description. Every item on the College Board’s “Topic Outline” is covered thoroughly in the text. Look inside the front cover for a detailed alignment guide. The few topics in the book that go beyond the AP® syllabus are marked with an asterisk (*).
Most importantly, TPS 5e is designed to prepare you for the AP® Statistics exam. The entire author team has been involved in the AP® Statistics program since its early days. We have more than 80 years’ combined experience teaching introductory statistics and more than 30 years’ combined experience grading the AP® exam! Two of us (Starnes and Tabor) have served as Question Leaders for several years, helping to write scoring rubrics for free-response questions. Including our Content Advisory Board and Supplements Team (page vii), we have two former
Test Development Committee members and 11 AP® exam Readers. TPS 5e will help you get ready for the AP® Statistics exam throughout the course by:
• Using terms, notation, formulas, and tables consistent with those found on the AP® exam. Key terms are shown in bold in the text, and they are defined in the Glossary. Key terms also are cross-referenced in the Index. See page F-1 to find
“Formulas for the AP® Statistics Exam” as well as Tables A, B, and C in the back of the book for reference.
• Following accepted conventions from AP® exam rubrics when presenting model solutions. Over the years, the scoring guidelines for free response questions have become fairly consistent. We kept these guidelines in mind when writing the solutions that appear throughout TPS 5e. For example, the four-step State-Plan- Do-Conclude process that we use to complete inference problems in Chapters 8 through 12 closely matches the four-point AP® scoring rubrics.
• Including AP® Exam Tips in the margin where appropriate. We place exam tips in the margins and in some Technology Corners as “on-the-spot” reminders of common mistakes and how to avoid them. These tips are collected and summarized in Appendix A.
• Providing hundreds of AP®-style exercises throughout the book. We even added a new kind of problem just prior to each Chapter Review, called a FRAPPY (Free Response AP® Problem, Yay!). Each FRAPPY gives you the chance to solve an AP®-style free-response problem based on the material in the chapter. After you finish, you can view and critique two example solutions from the book’s Web site (www.whfreeman.com/tps5e). Then you can score your own response using a rubric provided by your teacher.
Turn the page for a tour of the text. See how to use the book to realize success in the course and on the AP® exam.