Essential Statistics, 2nd edition

The writing style is relaxed and conversational, engaging readers using language they can understand.

• Student guidance features appear throughout every chapter, ensuring that readers are following the material and making connections to their everyday lives:
• Snapshots go beyond a definition by breaking down the statistical concepts introduced in the text discussion, quickly summarizing the concept or procedure, and indicating when and how it should be used.
• A Theme opens each chapter, setting the tone and introducing the chapter's concepts.
• A Case Study opens each chapter, showing a real-world application of the concepts. At the end of the chapter, the case study is revisited to show how the statistical techniques covered in the chapter help solve the problem presented.
• Margin Notes draw attention to details that enhance learning and reading comprehension.
• Caution notes provide warnings about common mistakes or misconceptions.
• Looking Back reminders refer students to earlier coverage of a topic.
• Details clarify or expand on a concept.
• Key Points highlight essential concepts within the text to draw special attention to them. Understanding these concepts is essential for progress.
• The Chapter Review that concludes each chapter provides a list of important new terms, student learning objectives, a quick summary of the concepts and methods discussed, and sources for data, articles, and graphics referred to in the chapter.
• Technology integration emphasizes the use of statistical software, which allows readers to focus on learning the concepts rather than being bogged down with unnecessarily time-consuming number crunching.
• Check Your Tech shows students how to calculate a problem by hand, using formulas, and get the same result as statistical software.
• TechTips outline steps for performing calculations using TI-83/84-Plus^® graphing calculators, Excel^®, Minitab^®, and StatCrunch^®. Whenever a new method or procedure is introduced, an icon refers students to the TechTips section at the end of the chapter.
• Mathematical formulas are limited throughout the book, and are introduced only when necessary to understand a concept.
• Data sets used in the exposition and exercises, and marked with an icon, are available in MyStatLab, at the textbook's web site, and at www.pearsonhighered.com/mathstatsresources. Data sets are provided in multiple formats.
• An active learning focus keeps students engaged in the material.
• NEW AND UPDATED examples appear in each chapter, with current topics such as views of stem cell research (Chapter 7) and online classes (Chapter 10). Many examples were also revised for a more thorough integration of technology.
• NEW! A wealth of exercises—including more than 400 new, revised, and updated exercises—appears at the end of each chapter, most using real data. Output from a range of statistical software is often included to acclimate students to interpreting results, regardless of which technology generated them.
• Guided Exercises step students through solving a problem if they need extra help while doing homework. These exercises are marked with an icon to indicate that step-by-step instruction is available in the Guided Exercises section at the end of the chapter.
• End-of-chapter exercises are organized by section and level of difficulty. Challenging exercises, identified with an asterisk, ask open-ended questions and sometimes require students to perform a complete statistical analysis.
• An abundance of worked-out examples model solutions to real-world problems that are relevant to students' lives. Each example is tied to an exercise (denoted with an icon in the exercise set) so that students can practice solving a similar problem.
• Exploring Statistics is an in-class activity intended to foster group work and hands-on exploration of statistics. There is one activity per chapter.

Also available with MyStatLab

MyStatLab^™ from Pearson is the world’s leading online resource for teaching and learning statistics, integrating interactive homework, assessment, and media in a flexible, easy-to-use format. MyStatLab is a course management system that delivers improving results in helping individual students succeed.

• MyStatLab can be implemented successfully in any environment—lab-based, hybrid, fully online, traditional—and demonstrates the quantifiable difference that integrated usage has on student retention, subsequent success, and overall achievement.
• MyStatLab’s comprehensive online gradebook automatically tracks students’ results on tests, quizzes, and homework and in the study plan. Instructors can use the gradebook to provide positive feedback or intervene if students have trouble. Gradebook data can be easily exported to a variety of spreadsheet programs, such as Microsoft Excel^®.

MyStatLab provides engaging experiences that personalize, stimulate, and measure learning for each student. In addition to the resources below, each course includes a full interactive online version of the accompanying textbook.

• Personalized Learning: We now offer your course with an optional focus on adaptive learning to allow your students to work—on just what they need to learn, and just when they need it—to maximize their potential for understanding and success.
• Tutorial Exercises with Multimedia Learning Aids: The homework and practice exercises in MyStatLab align with the exercises in the textbook, and most regenerate algorithmically to give students unlimited opportunity for practice and mastery. Exercises offer immediate helpful feedback, guided solutions, sample problems, applets, videos, statistical software tutorial videos, and eText clips for extra help at the point-of-use.
• MyStatLab Accessibility: MyStatLab is compatible with the JAWS screen reader and enables multiple-choice and free-response problem types to be read and interacted with via keyboard controls and math notation input. MyStatLab also works with screen enlargers, including ZoomText, MAGic, and SuperNova. And all MyStatLab videos, accompanying texts with copyright 2009 and later, have closed captioning. More information on this functionality is available at http://mymathlab.com/accessibility.
• StatTalk Videos: Fun-loving statistician Andrew Vickers takes to the streets of Brooklyn, NY, to demonstrate important statistical concepts through interesting stories and real-life events. This series of 24 fun and engaging videos will help students actually understand statistical concepts. Available with an instructor’s user guide and assessment questions.
• Additional Question Libraries: In addition to algorithmically regenerated questions that are aligned with your textbook, MyStatLab courses come with two additional question libraries.
• 450 exercises in Getting Ready for Statistics cover the developmental math topics students need for the course. These can be assigned as a prerequisite to other assignments, if desired.
• 1000 exercises in the Conceptual Question Library require students to apply their statistical understanding.

• StatCrunch™: MyStatLab integrates the web-based statistical software, StatCrunch, within the online assessment platform so that students can easily analyze data sets from exercises and the text. In addition, MyStatLab includes access to www.StatCrunch.com, a vibrant online community where users can access tens of thousands of shared data sets, create and conduct online surveys, perform complex analyses using the powerful statistical software, and generate compelling reports.
• Statistical Software Support and Integration: We make it easy to copy our data sets, both from the eText and the MyStatLab questions, into software such as StatCrunch, Minitab, Excel, and more. Students have access to a variety of support tools—Technology Tutorial Videos, Technology Study Cards, and Technology Manuals for select titles—to learn how to effectively use statistical software.

And, MyStatLab comes from an experienced partner with educational expertise and an eye on the future.

• Knowing that you are using a Pearson product means knowing that you are using quality content. That means that our eTexts are accurate and our assessment tools work. It means we are committed to making MyStatLab as accessible as possible.
• Whether you are just getting started with MyStatLab or have a question along the way, we’re here to help you learn about our technologies and how to incorporate them into your course.     

To learn more about how MyStatLab combines proven learning applications with powerful assessment, visit www.mystatlab.com or contact your Pearson representative.

NEW! To the Gould/Ryan/Wong MyStatLab Course:

• Chapter Review Videos walk students through solving a selection of the more complex problems posed in each chapter, providing a review of the chapter's key concepts and offering students support where they most need it.
• Student PowerPoint^® slides provide an overview of each chapter, stressing important definitions and offering additional examples. These slides are an excellent resource for both traditional and online students. These are available in MyStatLab.
• Increased data-driven exercise coverage gives students more opportunities to practice the material. A goal of this revision is to improve learning outcomes for students. To help achieve this goal, we analyzed aggregated student usage and performance data from the first edition's MyStatLab course. The results of this analysis yielded specific improvements to this edition, including:

• Adjusted difficulty levels—we analyzed the easiest and most challenging exercises in the text to see whether adjustments needed to be made to those exercises or to the instruction in the text that supports them.

• Added or adjusted content—We analyzed exercise usage data to determine where content might need to be added to this text and its MyStatLab course. We also analyzed exercise and eText usage data to determine whether content that was seldom used, might be covered more succinctly.
• Data Cycle in Everyday Things videos bring real-world situations to life. Students are introduced to the concept of a data cycle, showing how statistics and data don’t necessarily have a "start and stop" point or a “yes or no” answer. Statistics is an exploration in data where we ask questions, collect data, analyze findings, interpret meaning, and repeat!
• Learning Catalytics™ Integration: Learning Catalytics is a web-based engagement and assessment tool. As a "bring-your-own-device" direct response system, Learning Catalytics offers a diverse library of dynamic question types that allow students to interact with and think critically about statistical concepts. As a real-time resource, instructors can take advantage of critical teaching moments both in the classroom or through assignable and gradable homework.

• NEW AND UPDATED examples appear in each chapter, with current topics such as views of stem cell research (Chapter 7) and online classes (Chapter 10). Many examples were also revised for a more thorough integration of technology.
• NEW! A wealth of exercises—including more than 400 new, revised, and updated exercises—appears at the end of each chapter, most using real data. Output from a range of statistical software is often included to acclimate students to interpreting results, regardless of which technology generated them.
• Guided Exercises step students through solving a problem if they need extra help while doing homework. These exercises are marked with an icon to indicate that step-by-step instruction is available in the Guided Exercises section at the end of the chapter.
• End-of-chapter exercises are organized by section and level of difficulty. Challenging exercises, identified with an asterisk, ask open-ended questions and sometimes require students to perform a complete statistical analysis.

New in MyStatLab^™

MyStatLab^™ from Pearson is the world’s leading online resource for teaching and learning statistics, integrating interactive homework, assessment, and media in a flexible, easy-to-use format. MyStatLab is a course management system that delivers improving results in helping individual students succeed.

• Chapter Review Videos walk students through solving a selection of the more complex problems posed in each chapter, providing a review of the chapter's key concepts and offering students support where they most need it.
• Student PowerPoint^® slides provide an overview of each chapter, stressing important definitions and offering additional examples. These slides are an excellent resource for both traditional and online students. These are available in MyStatLab.
• Increased data-driven exercise coverage gives students more opportunities to practice the material. A goal of this revision is to improve learning outcomes for students. To help achieve this goal, we analyzed aggregated student usage and performance data from the first edition's MyStatLab course. The results of this analysis yielded specific improvements to this edition, including:

• Adjusted difficulty levels—we analyzed the easiest and most challenging exercises in the text to see whether adjustments needed to be made to those exercises or to the instruction in the text that supports them.

• Added or adjusted content—We analyzed exercise usage data to determine where content might need to be added to this text and its MyStatLab course. We also analyzed exercise and eText usage data to determine whether content that was seldom used, might be covered more succinctly.
• Data Cycle in Everyday Things videos bring real-world situations to life. Students are introduced to the concept of a data cycle, showing how statistics and data don’t necessarily have a "start and stop" point or a “yes or no” answer. Statistics is an exploration in data where we ask questions, collect data, analyze findings, interpret meaning, and repeat!
• Learning Catalytics™ Integration: Learning Catalytics is a web-based engagement and assessment tool. As a "bring-your-own-device" direct response system, Learning Catalytics offers a diverse library of dynamic question types that allow students to interact with and think critically about statistical concepts. As a real-time resource, instructors can take advantage of critical teaching moments both in the classroom or through assignable and gradable homework.