This book consists of 42 anecdotes illustrating how statistical methods applied to data produce insight and solutions to the questions that the data were collected to answer. Real-life and sometimes artificial data are used to demonstrate the painless method and magic of statistics. Statistical jokes, puzzles and folktales are scattered throughout.
This "treasury" of statistical anecdotes offers 41 engaging yet substantive examples of statistics and probability as found in real-life settings. One remarkable feature is the surprising range of everyday contexts from which Selvin draws material, turning now to a TV show, then to a legal case, and often to his own specialty of public health and epidemiology. Another attractive feature is that the text lucidly explains the subtle differences and implications of similar but different concepts: correlation and association, relative risk and odds ratio, to name a few...this book deserves welcome as a supplementary introduction to the discipline.
