The Joy of Statistics

Steve Selvin is a professor of biostatistics and epidemiology at the University of California, Berkeley. He has taught on the Berkeley campus for more than 40 years. Professor Selvin is also a member of the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health faculty and has taught in the Summer Institute of Biostatistics and Epidemiology for the last fifteen years. He lives in the Berkeley hills with two cats, one dog and a wife who is a well known ceramic artist. He has authored or co-authored more than 250 scientific papers in the area of statistics applied to epidemiological/health issues with emphasis on birth defects and childhood cancer. In addition he has written 10 books on applied statistical methods. He has received a number of awards for teaching excellence, including the most prestigious award given by the University of California called the Berkeley Citation. His present research concerns the analysis of spatial patterns of childhood cancers in the state of California over the last decade.

I recommend The Joy of Statistics to those who want to begin studying statistics or who need a quick refresher book. Dr Selvin does an exemplary job of explaining basic concepts without overwhelming the reader with jargon or dense details.

• 1: Probabilities -- rules and review 2: Distributions of data -- four plots 3: Mean value -- estimation and a few properties 4: Boxplots -- construction and interpretation 5: The lady who tasted tea -- a bit of statistical history 6: Outlier/extreme values -- a difficult decision 7: The role of summary statistics -- brief description 8: Correlation and association -- interpretation 9: Proportional reduction in error -- a measure of association 10: Quick Tests -- four examples 11: Confounding -- African-American and white infant mortality 12: Odds -- a sometimes measure of likelihood 13: Odds ratio -- a measure of risk? 14: Odds ratio -- two properties rarely mentioned 15: Percent increase -- ratios? 16: Diagnostic tests -- assessing accuracy 17: Regression to the mean -- father/son data 18: Life table -- a summary of mortality experience 19: Coincidence -- a statistical description 20: Draft lottery numbers (1970) 21: Lotto -- How to get in .... How to win 22: Fatal coronary disease -- risk 23: Pictures 24: The Monty Hall problem 25: Eye-witness evidence -- Collins versus state of California 26: Probabilities and puzzles 27: Jokes and quotes 28: A true life puzzle 29: Rates -- definition and estimation 30: Geometry of an approximate average rate 31: Simpson> 's paradox -- two examples and a bit more 32: Smoothing -- median values 33: Two by two table -- a missing observation 34: Survey data -- randomized response 35: Viral incidence estimation -- a shortcut 36: Two-way table -- a graphical analysis 37: Data -- too good to be true? 38: A binary variable -- twin pairs 39: Mr. Rich and Mr. Poor -- a give and take equilibrium 40: Log-normal distribution -- leukemia and pesticide exposure 41: Poem -- A Contribution to Statistics APP: appendix: golden mean, Pythagorean theorem, chord theorem, pi