Making decisions is a ubiquitous mental activity in our private and professional or public lives. It entails choosing one course of action from an available shortlist of options. Statistics for Making Decisions places decision making at the centre of statistical inference, proposing its theory as a new paradigm for statistical practice. The analysis in this paradigm is earnest about prior information and the consequences of the various kinds of errors that may be committed. Its conclusion is a course of action tailored to the perspective of the specific client or sponsor of the analysis. The author’s intention is a wholesale replacement of hypothesis testing, indicting it with the argument that it has no means of incorporating the consequences of errors which self-evidently matter to the client. The volume appeals to the analyst who deals with the simplest statistical problems of comparing two samples (which one has a greater mean or variance), or deciding whether a parameter is positive or negative. It combines highlighting the deficiencies of hypothesis testing with promoting a principled solution based on the idea of a currency for error, of which we want to spend as little as possible. This is implemented by selecting the option for which the expected loss is smallest (the Bayes rule). The price to pay is the need for a more detailed description of the options, and eliciting and quantifying the consequences (ramifications) of the errors. This is what our clients do informally and often inexpertly after receiving outputs of the analysis in an established format, such as the verdict of a hypothesis test or an estimate and its standard error. As a scientific discipline and profession, statistics has a potential to do this much better and deliver to the client a more complete and more relevant product. Nicholas T. Longford is a senior statistician at Imperial College, London, specialising in statistical methods for neonatal medicine. His interests include causal analysis of observational studies, decision theory, and the contest of modelling and design in data analysis. His longer-term appointments in the past include Educational Testing Service, Princeton, NJ, USA, de Montfort University, Leicester, England, and directorship of SNTL, a statistics research and consulting company. He is the author of over 100 journal articles and six other monographs on a variety of topics in applied statistics.

Statistics, 2nd Edition teaches statistics with a modern, data-analytic approach that uses graphing calculators and statistical software. It allows more emphasis to be put on statistical concepts and data analysis rather than following recipes for calculations. This gives readers a more realistic understanding of both the theoretical and practical applications of statistics, giving them the ability to master the subject.

Government scrutiny and intensified oversight have dramatically changed the landscape of education in recent years. Observers want to know how schools compare, which district is best, which states are spending the most per student on education, whether reforms are making a difference, and why so many students are failing. Some of these questions require technical answers that educators historically redirected to outside experts, but the questions leveled at all educators have become so acute and persistent that they can no longer be outsourced. This text helps educators develop the tools and the conceptual understanding needed to provide definitive answers to difficult statistical questions facing education today.

In this new edition the author has added substantial material on Bayesian analysis, including lengthy new sections on such important topics as empirical and hierarchical Bayes analysis, Bayesian calculation, Bayesian communication, and group decision making. With these changes, the book can be used as a self-contained introduction to Bayesian analysis. In addition, much of the decision-theoretic portion of the text was updated, including new sections covering such modern topics as minimax multivariate (Stein) estimation.

In Statistics for Business: Decision Making and Analysis, authors Robert Stine and Dean Foster of the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, take a sophisticated approach to teaching statistics in the context of making good business decisions. The authors show students how to recognize and understand each business question, use statistical tools to do the analysis, and how to communicate their results clearly and concisely. In addition to providing cases and real data to demonstrate real business situations, this text provides resources to support understanding and engagement. A successful problem-solving framework in the 4-M Examples (Motivation, Method, Mechanics, Message) model a clear outline for solving problems, new What Do You Think questions give students an opportunity to stop and check their understanding as they read, and new learning objectives guide students through each chapter and help them to review major goals. Software Hints provide instructions for using the most up-to-date technology packages. The Second Edition also includes expanded coverage and instruction of Excel® 2010.

The chief executive officer of a corporation is not much different from a public school administrator. While CEOs base many of their decisions on data, for school administrators, this type of research may conjure up miserable memories of searching for information to meet a graduate school requirement. However, the value of data-based decision making will continue to escalate and the school community—students, teachers, parents and the general public—expect this information to come from their administrators. Administrators are called on to be accountable, but few are capable of presenting the mountain of data that they collect in a cohesive and strategic manner. Most statistical books are focused on statistical theory versus application, but Statistics Made Simple for School Leaders presents statistics in a simple, practical, conceptual, and immediately applicable manner. It enables administrators to take their data and manage it into strategic information so the results can be used for action plans that benefit the school system. The approach is 'user friendly' and leaves the reader with a confident can-do attitude to communicate results and plans to staff and the community.

Basic Statistics with R: Reaching Decisions with Data provides an understanding of the processes at work in using data for results. Sections cover data collection and discuss exploratory analyses, including visual graphs, numerical summaries, and relationships between variables - basic probability, and statistical inference - including hypothesis testing and confidence intervals. All topics are taught using real-data drawn from various fields, including economics, biology, political science and sports. Using this wide variety of motivating examples allows students to directly connect and make statistics essential to their field of interest, rather than seeing it as a separate and ancillary knowledge area. In addition to introducing students to statistical topics using real data, the book provides a gentle introduction to coding, having the students use the statistical language and software R. Students learn to load data, calculate summary statistics, create graphs and do statistical inference using R with either Windows or Macintosh machines. - Features real-data to give students an engaging practice to connect with their areas of interest - Evolves from basic problems that can be worked by hand to the elementary use of opensource R software - Offers a direct, clear approach highlighted by useful visuals and examples