Chance Encounters: A First Course in Data Analysis and Inference

Excellent textbook

Twenty years on from publication, this remains an outstanding introductory statistics text. There is excellent balance between informal exploratory data analysis, including graphics, and more formal machinery such as confidence intervals and significance tests.The authors are skillful in explaining the essence of statistical ideas and their strengths and limitations without patronizing diffident readers, or short-changing those with sufficient background to benefit from a rigorous approach. Professionals and researchers in any field who missed out on a good grounding in statistics earlier in their careers would be as well served as students taking formal courses.The mix of examples is especially wide-ranging. The authors hail from New Zealand and present a thoroughly international and interdisciplinary range of illustrations, mostly based on real data.

The "search inside this book" feature was not available when this review was posted. Hope it helps.Contents:1 What is Statistics?2 Tools for Exploring Univariate Data3 Exploratory Tools for Relationships4 Probabilities and Proportions5 Discrete Random Variables6 Continuous Random Variables7 Sampling Distributions of Estimates8 Confidence Intervals9 Significance Testing: Using Data to Test Hypotheses10 Data on a Continuous Variable11 Tables of Counts12 Relationships between Quantitative Variables: Regression and Correlation13 Control Charts14 Time SeriesAppendix: Statistical TablesReferencesAnswers to Selected ProblemsIndex