Hands on Data Analysis

Designed to teach students to apply statistical methods to real problems (a universal need), Bruce Trumbo's concise new book teaches basic statistical principles through their application to real data. The data sets are chosen from fields to which all students can relate, such as marketing, industrial safety, anthropology, psychology, banking, biology, linguistics, public health, geography, physics, sports, geology, and medicine. Throughout the book, the emphasis is on how statistical ideas and methods can be used to illuminate the data, rather than on how the data can be used to illustrate particular statistical methods. Some of the basic statistical methods that prove to be useful include graphical displays, confidence intervals, one and two-sample t-tests, chi-squared analyses of contingency tables, simple and multiple linear regression, correlation, one-way ANOVAs, and block designs. For each data set, students are guided through some basic procedures, usually using MINITAB[trademark], then invited to explore the data more extensively on their own, with answers and possible approaches.