Statistical Tools – Te Grotenhuis and Van der Weegen (2009)

How does one teach statistics? Is it more important to start with mathematical thoroughness, or to help students to gain a conceptual understanding first? Few give a comprehensive introduction to statistics for those without the otherwise indispensable mathematical background. Manfred te Grotenhuis and Theo van der Weegen recently published an introductory book on statistics, explaining statistical concepts using words and graphs, rather than formulas.

Less than a year ago, I wrote these exact words. I then discussed the publication of a Dutch book on statistics, to which I provided minor assistance. Now, I repeat these words to introduce the Enligsh translation of this conceptual introduction to statistics, called Statistical Tools. Again, I contributed to this publication, this time by providing a first, rough, translation from Dutch to English. Let me repeat below what I wrote before on this blog, for of course this still holds relevance for the translation to English:

With the focus on practical application rather than statistical theory, the first chapter starts explaining the goal of inferential statistics, meanwhile introducing the concepts of measurement and variables. Considerable attention is paid to the importance of high quality data to perform your analyses on. The second chapter … Continue Reading