This book is intended for use in the statistical literacy course or an introductory statistics course that emphasizes concepts over computation. The goal is to give students a conceptual understanding of statistics and develop their statistical reasoning skills. This text approaches statistics by presenting an overall picture and then providing explanation of the topics in context. Students develop an understanding of statistics that is reinforced in the exercises and web projects, and by doing some computation.

Click HERE to go to the Addison Wesley web site for Statistical Reasoning for Everyday Life. This site contains resources for students and instructors.

Table of Contents

1. Speaking of Statistics
   1.1 What Is/Are Statistics?
   1.2 Sampling
   1.3 Types of Statistical Study
   1.4 Should You Believe a Statistical Study?
   Focus on Sociology: Does Daycare Breed Bullies?
   Focus on Public Health: Is Your Lifestyle Healthy?
   
   
2. Measurement In Statistics
   2.1 Data Types and Levels of Measurement
   2.2 Dealing with Errors
   2.3 Uses of Percentages in Statistics
   2.4 Index Numbers
   Focus on Politics: Who Benefits from a Tax Cut?
   Focus on Economics: Does the CPI Really Measure Inflation?
   
   
3. Visual Displays of Data
   3.1 Frequency Tables
   3.2 Picturing Distributions of Data
   3.3 Graphics in the Media
   3.4 A Few Cautions About Graphics
   Focus on History: Can War Be Described with a Graph?
   Focus on Environment: How Much Carbon Dioxide Is in the Atmopshere?
   
   
4. Describing Data
   4.1 What is Average?
   4.2 Shapes of Distributions
   4.3 Measures of Variation
   Focus on the Stock Market: What's Average About the Dow?
   Focus on Economics: Are the Rich Getting Richer?
   
   
5. A Normal World
   5.1 What is Normal?
   5.2 Properties of the Normal Distribution
   5.3 The Central Limit Theorem
   Focus on Education: What Do SAT Scores Mean?
   Focus on Psychology: Are We Smarter Than Our Parents?
   
   
6. Probability in Statistics
   6.1 The Role of Probablity in Statistics: Statistical Significance
   6.2 Basics of Probability
   6.3 Probablilities with Large Numbers
   6.4 Combining Probabilities
   Focus on Social Science: Are Lotteries Fair?
   Focus on Law: Is DNA Fingerprinting Reliable?
   
   
7. Correlation and Causality
   7.1 Seeking Correlation
   7.2 Interpreting Correlations
   7.3 Best-Fit Lines and Prediction
   7.4 The Search for Causality
   Focus on Education: What Helps Children Read?
   Focus on Public Health: What Do Disease Clusters Mean?
   
   
8. From Samples to Populations
   8.1 Sampling Distributions
   8.2 Estimating Population Means
   8.3 Estimating Population Proportions
   Focus on Media: Did NBC Lose $66 Million to a Nielsen Sampling Error?
   Focus on Literature: How Many Words Did Shakespeare Know?
   
   
9. Hypothesis Testing
   9.1 Fundamentals of Hypothesis Testing
   9.2 Setting Up Hypothesis Tests
   9.3 Hypothesis Tests for Population Means
   9.4 Hypothesis Testing: Further Considerations
   9.5 Hypothesis Testing: Population Proportions
   Focus on History: Where Did Statistics Begin?
   Focus on Agriculture: Are Genetically Modified Foods Safe?
   
   
10. Further Applications of Statistics
    10.1 Ideas of Risk and Life Expectancy
    10.2 Statistical Paradoxes
    10.3 Hypothesis Testing with Two-Way tables
    Focus on Criminology: Can You Tell a Fraud When You See One?
    Focus on Education: What Can a Fourth-Grader Do with Statistics?