Making Sense of Statistics provides a thorough, but accessible, introduction to statistics and probability, without the distractions of mathematics. The book does not require you to use any algebraic formulae or equations, but it does explain how and why methods work, and exactly what answers mean. Guidance is provided on how to design investigations, analyze data and interpret results. There are exercises and case studies from a variety of areas of application, and an accompanying website from which interactive spreadsheet models and data files can be downloaded.

'I would recommend this book to any student following a non-science type of course at university.' - Susan Starkings, Significance (Magazine of The Royal Statistical Society)

'There is a lot of very helpful...text explaining the concepts, and also giving many practical hints for particular situations...the style of presentation is very good, giving an impression that the book is a pleasure to read and relatively easy to understand...In any case, it is very interesting to know that most of the basic ideas of statistics can be consistantly and nicely explained with surprisingly simple means...The book can definitely be very helpful for anyone who needs to know about statistics.' - Journal of Operational Research Society

'There is a lot of very helpful in-line text explaining the concepts, and also giving many practical hints for particular situations...the style of presentation is very good, giving an impression that the book is a pleasure to read and relatively easy to understand...The book can definitely be very helpful for anyone who needs to know about statistics. I think that it may successfully be used as a course text...I think I may recommend it also as a text for additional or, maybe better yet., after-reading for students who follow a classical statistics course.' - Journal of the Operational Research Society

Introduction: Statistics, Non-mathematical Methods and How to Use this Book
Probability, Samples, Buckets and Balls
Summing Things Up: Graphs, Averages, Standard Deviations, Correlations and so on
Why Use Statistics? Pros, Cons and Alternatives
Calculating Probabilities: Mental Ball Crunching and Computer Games
Possible Worlds and Actual Worlds: How Can We Decide What's True?
How Big is the Error? Confidence Intervals
Checking if Anything is Going On: Tests of Null Hypotheses
Predicting the Unpredictable, or Explaining the Inexplicable: Regression Models
How to Do It and What Does It Mean? The Design and Interpretation of Investigations
Appendix A: Using Spreadsheets (Excel) for Statistics
Appendix B: A Brief Guide to the Statistical Package, SPSS
Appendix C: Data and Program Files for Downloading
Appendix D: Comments on Some of the Exercises
Notes
References
Index

MICHAEL WOOD is a Lecturer at Portsmouth University. He has taught statistics and related areas to undergraduates, postgraduate and research students in a range of disciplines, and to participants on short courses for business organizations. He has published widely on statistics and research methods, business and management, and education.