Book Details

Internet Resource: Please Login to download book

This book tries to strike a balance between mathematical foundations and statistical practice. The book provides a clear and current exposition of statistical concepts and methodology, including many examples and exercises based on real data gleaned from publicly available sources. The main focus of the book is on presenting and illustrating methods of inferential statistics used by investigators in a wide variety of disciplines, from actuarial science all the way to zoology. It begins with a chapter on descriptive statistics that immediately exposes the reader to the analysis of real data. The next six chapters develop the probability material that facilitates the transition from simply describing data to drawing formal conclusions based on inferential methodology. Point estimation, the use of statistical intervals, and hypothesis testing are the topics of the first three inferential chapters. The remainder of the book explores the use of these methods in a variety of more complex settings.