The Joy of Statistics: A Treasury of Elementary Statistical Tools and their Applications

The vast majority of statistics books delineate techniques used to analyze collected data. The Joy of Statistics is not one of these books. It consists of a series of 42 "short stories", each illustrating how statistical methods applied to data produce insight and solutions to the questions the data were collected to answer. Real-life and sometimes artificial data are used to demonstrate the often painless method and magic of statistics. In addition, the text contains brief histories of the evolution of statistical methods and a number of brief biographies of the most famous statisticians of the 20th century. Sprinkled throughout are statistical jokes, puzzles and traditional stories. The levels of statistical texts span a spectrum, from elementary to introductory to application to theoretical to advanced mathematical. This book explores a variety of statistical applications using graphs and plots, along with detailed and intuitive descriptions, and occasionally a bit of 10th grade mathematics. Examples of a few of the topics included among these "short stories" are pet ownership, gambling games such as roulette, blackjack and lotteries, as well as more serious subjects such as comparison of black/white infant mortality risk, infant birth weight and maternal age, estimation of coronary heart disease risk and racial differences in Hodgkin disease. The statistical descriptions of these topics are in many cases accompanied by easy to understand explanations labelled "How it Works."

Table of Contents:
1: Probabilities -- rules and review 2: Distributions of data -- four plots 3: Mean value -- estimation and a few properties 4: Boxplots -- construction and interpretation 5: The lady who tasted tea -- a bit of statistical history 6: Outlier/extreme values -- a difficult decision 7: The role of summary statistics -- brief description 8: Correlation and association -- interpretation 9: Proportional reduction in error -- a measure of association 10: Quick Tests -- four examples 11: Confounding -- African-American and white infant mortality 12: Odds -- a sometimes measure of likelihood 13: Odds ratio -- a measure of risk? 14: Odds ratio -- two properties rarely mentioned 15: Percent increase -- ratios? 16: Diagnostic tests -- assessing accuracy 17: Regression to the mean -- father/son data 18: Life table -- a summary of mortality experience 19: Coincidence -- a statistical description 20: Draft lottery numbers (1970) 21: Lotto -- How to get in .... How to win 22: Fatal coronary disease -- risk 23: Pictures 24: The Monty Hall problem 25: Eye-witness evidence -- Collins versus state of California 26: Probabilities and puzzles 27: Jokes and quotes 28: A true life puzzle 29: Rates -- definition and estimation 30: Geometry of an approximate average rate 31: Simpson>'s paradox -- two examples and a bit more 32: Smoothing -- median values 33: Two by two table -- a missing observation 34: Survey data -- randomized response 35: Viral incidence estimation -- a shortcut 36: Two-way table -- a graphical analysis 37: Data -- too good to be true? 38: A binary variable -- twin pairs 39: Mr. Rich and Mr. Poor -- a give and take equilibrium 40: Log-normal distribution -- leukemia and pesticide exposure 41: Poem -- A Contribution to Statistics APP: appendix: golden mean, Pythagorean theorem, chord theorem, pi

About the Author :
Steve Selvin is a professor of biostatistics and epidemiology at the University of California, Berkeley. He has taught on the Berkeley campus for more than 40 years. Professor Selvin is also a member of the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health faculty and has taught in the Summer Institute of Biostatistics and Epidemiology for the last fifteen years. He lives in the Berkeley hills with two cats, one dog and a wife who is a well known ceramic artist. He has authored or co-authored more than 250 scientific papers in the area of statistics applied to epidemiological/health issues with emphasis on birth defects and childhood cancer. In addition he has written 10 books on applied statistical methods. He has received a number of awards for teaching excellence, including the most prestigious award given by the University of California called the Berkeley Citation. His present research concerns the analysis of spatial patterns of childhood cancers in the state of California over the last decade.

Review :
I recommend The Joy of Statistics to those who want to begin studying statistics or who need a quick refresher book. Dr Selvin does an exemplary job of explaining basic concepts without overwhelming the reader with jargon or dense details. The format is some 40 or so short chapters...the reader is consistently presented with topics and questions that are specifically not conventional compared to the often rather identikit ones offered and discussed in ordinary textbooks...In the hands of a thoughtful undergraduate, this may well inspire curiosity for the wider subject of statistics. A teacher will certainly find a fresh wrinkle or three to keep a motivated group engaged for a number of classes. The Joy of Statistics provides a short, accessible and, at times, light-hearted glimpse into the vast world of statistics. This book delivers the general background needed to begin understanding statistical methods and how to apply them alongside an assortment of anecdotes, jokes, and historical information...I recommend The Joy of Statistics to those who want to begin studying statistics or who need a quick refresher book. Dr Selvin does an exemplary job of explaining basic concepts without overwhelming the reader with jargon or dense details. Thus, readers from a diverse set of statistical backgrounds can find assistance from this book. 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.