Includes bibliographical references and index.

Statistics Success Stories and Cautionary Tales -- What Is Statistics? -- Seven Statistical Stories with Morals -- Who Are Those Speedy Drivers? -- Disaster in the Skies? -- Did Anyone Ask Whom You've Been Dating? -- Who Are Those Angry Women? -- Does Prayer Lower Blood Pressure? -- Does Aspirin Reduce Heart Attack Rates? -- Does the Internet Increase Loneliness and Depression? -- The Common Elements in the Seven Stories -- Turning Data into Information -- Raw Data -- Types of Data -- Summarizing One or Two Categorical Variables -- Finding Information in Quantitative Data -- Pictures for Quantitative Data -- Numerical Summaries of Quantitative Variables -- Bell-Shaped Distributions of Numbers -- Gathering Useful Data -- Description or Decision? Using Data Wisely -- Speaking the Language of Research Studies -- Lead Exposure and Bad Teeth -- Designing a Good Experiment -- Kids and Weight Lifting -- Quitting Smoking with Nicotine Patches -- Designing a Good Observational Study -- Baldness and Heart Attacks -- Difficulties and Disasters in Experiments and Observational Studies -- Sampling: Surveys and How To Ask Questions -- The Beauty of Sampling -- Sampling Methods -- Difficulties and Disasters in Sampling -- The Infamous Literary Digest Poll of 1936 -- How to Ask Survey Questions -- No Opinion of Your Own? Let Politics Decide -- Relationships Between Quantitative Variables -- Looking for Patterns with Scatterplots -- Describing Linear Patterns with a Regression Line -- Measuring Strength and Direction with Correlation -- Why Answers May Not Make Sense -- Correlation Does Not Prove Causation -- A Weighty Issue -- Relationships Between Categorical Variables -- Displaying Relationships Between Categorical Variables -- Risk, Relative Risk, Odds Ratio, and Increased Risk -- Misleading Statistics about Risk -- The Effect of a Third Variable and Simpson's Paradox -- Assessing the Statistical Significance of a 2 x 2 Table -- Drinking, Driving, and the Supreme Court -- Probability -- Random Circumstances -- A Hypothetical Story--Alicia Has a Bad Day -- Interpretations of Probability -- Probability Definitions and Relationships -- Basic Rules for Finding Probabilities -- Strategies for Finding Complicated Probabilities -- Using Simulation to Estimate Probabilities -- Coincidences and Intuitive Judgments about Probability -- Random Variables -- What is a Random Variable? -- Discrete Random Variables -- Expectations for Random Variables -- Binomial Random Variables -- Continuous Random Variables -- Normal Random Variables -- Approximating Binomial Distribution Probabilities -- Sums, Differences, and Combinations of Random Variables -- Does Caffeine Enhance the Taste of Cola? -- Means and Proportions as Random Variables -- Understanding Dissimilarity among Samples -- Sampling Distributions for Sample Proportions -- What to Expect of Sample Means -- What to Expect in Other Situations: Central Limit Theorem -- Sampling Distribution for Any Statistic -- Standardized Statistics -- Student's t-Distribution: Replacing [sigma] with s -- Statistical Inference -- Do Americans Really Vote When They Say They Do? -- Estimating Proportions with Confidence -- The Language and Notation of Estimation -- Margin of Error -- Confidence Intervals -- Calculating a Margin of Error for 95% Confidence -- General Theory of Confidence Intervals for a Proportion -- Choosing a Sample Size for a Survey -- Using Confidence Intervals to Guide Decisions -- Extrasensory Perception Works with Movies -- Nicotine Patches versus Zyban -- What a Great Personality -- Testing Hypotheses about Proportions -- Formulating Hypothesis Statements -- The Logic of Hypothesis Testing: What if the Null Is True? -- Reaching a Conclusion about the Two Hypotheses -- Testing Hypotheses about a Proportion -- The Role of Sample Size in Statistical Significance -- Real Importance versus Statistical Significance -- The Internet and Loneliness: Case Study 1.7 Revisited -- What Can Go Wrong: The Two Types of Errors -- An Interpretation of a p-Value Not Fit to Print -- More about Confidence Intervals -- Examples of Different Estimation Situations -- Standard Errors -- Approximate 95% Confidence Intervals -- General Confidence Intervals for One Mean or Paired Data -- General Confidence Intervals for the Difference Between Two Means (Independent Samples) -- The Difference Between Two Proportions (Independent Samples) -- Understanding Any Confidence Interval -- Confidence Interval for Relative Risk: Case Study 3.4 Revisited -- Premenstrual Syndrome? Try Calcium -- Summary of Formulas for Confidence Intervals -- More about Significance Tests -- The General Ideas of Significance Testing -- Testing Hypotheses about One Mean or Paired Data -- Testing the Difference Between Two Means (Independent Samples) -- Testing the Difference Between Two Population Proportions -- The Relationship Between Significance Tests and Confidence Intervals -- The Two Types of Errors and Their Probabilities -- Evaluating Significance in Research Reports -- More about Regression -- Sample and Population Regression Models -- Estimating the Standard Deviation for Regression -- Inference about the Linear Regression Relationship -- Predicting the Value y for an Individual -- Estimating the Mean y at a Specified x -- Checking Conditions for Using Regression Models for Inference -- A Contested Election -- More about Categorical Variables -- The Chi-square Test for Two-Way Tables -- Analyzing 2 [times] 2 Tables -- Testing Hypotheses about One Categorical Variable: Goodness of Fit -- Do You Mind if I Eat the Blue Ones? -- Analysis of Variance -- Comparing Means with an ANOVA F-Test -- Details of One-Way Analysis of Variance -- Other Methods for Comparing Populations -- Two-Way Analysis of Variance -- Turning Information into Wisdom -- Beyond the Data -- Transforming Uncertainty into Wisdom -- Making Personal Decisions -- Control of Societal Risks -- Understanding Our World.

System requirements for accompanying computer disc: Windows 95,98,2000 & NT ; Mac OS 8 or higher.