Statistics: Concepts and Controversies is a book on statistical ideas and statistical reasoning and on their relevance to public policy and to the human sciences from medicine to sociology. Many fundamental graphical and numerical techniques are included in the text to give flesh to the ideas and muscle to the reasoning. Students learn to think about data by working with data, however technique does not dominate concepts. This author’s intention here is to teach verbally rather than algebraically, to invite discussion and even argument rather than mere computation, though some computation remains essential. The coverage is considerably broader than one might traditionally cover in a one-term course, as the table of contents reveals. In the spirit of general education, breadth has been considered over detail.

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