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Naked statistics : stripping the dread from the data / Charles Wheelan.

by Wheelan, Charles J.

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W.W. Norton, c2013.

9780393071955 (hbk.)

0393071952 (hbk.)

xviii, 282 p. : ill. ; 25 cm.

Includes bibliographical references (p. [261]-267) and index.

Introduction: Why I hated calculus but love statistics -- 1. What's the point? -- 2. Descriptive statistics: who was the best baseball player of all time? -- 3. Deceptive description: "he's got a great personality!" and other true but grossly misleading statements -- 4. Correlation: how does Netflix know what movies I like? -- 5. Basic probability: don't buy the extended warranty on your $99 printer -- 5 1/2. The Monty Hall problem -- 6. Problems with probability: how overconfident math geeks nearly destroyed the global financial system -- 7. The importance of data: "garbage in, garbage out" -- 8. The central limit theorem: the Lebron James of statistics -- 9. Inference: why my statistics professor thought I might have cheated -- 10. Polling: how we know that 64 percent of Americans support the death penalty (with a sampling error (plus or minus) 3 percent) -- 11. Regression analysis: the miracle elixir -- 12. Common regression mistakes: the mandatory warning label -- 13. Program evaluation: will going to Harvard change your life? -- Conclusion: Five questions that statistics can help answer -- Appendix: Statistical warfare.

"Wheelan strips away the arcane and technical details and focuses on the underlying intuition that drives statistical analysis. He clarifies key concepts suich as inference, correlation, and regression analysis; reveals how biased or careless parties can manipulate or misrepresent data; and shows us how ... researchers are exploiting the valuable data from natural experiments to tackle thorny questions. ..."--Dust jacket.

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