A First Course in Statistics - Softcover

This book presents balanced coverage of the theory and application of statistics while enhancing student's critical thinking skills. It teaches students how to analyze data that appear in situations in the world around them - almost all of the examples and exercises are based on current, real-world applications pulled from journals, magazines, news articles, and commerce. The text shows students that knowledge of statistics is important to their own lives.

This practical introduction to statistics combines fundamental theory with present day applications and includes numerous examples from journals, magazines, news articles, and commerce to help readers learn how to analyze data that appear in situations in the world around them. Stresses the importance of data collection, observations, experiments, and surveys in drawing meaningful inferences from data. Discusses methods for describing data sets (detecting outliers and graphing relationships between variables); probability; random variables and probability distributions (assessing normality that covers normal probability plots); inferences based on a single sample: tests of hypothesis; comparing population proportions; simple linear regression, and much more. Features over 800 applied exercises with real data, plus a pertinent “Statistics in Action” case in each chapter (i.e., IQ, Economic Mobility, and the Bell Curve, March Madness—Handicapping the NCAA Basketball Tourney). Wherever appropriate, a box describing the keystrokes and output of TI-8 graphing calculator are inserted into sections. For business, engineering, and science professionals.