Instructor Resources
Dear colleague,
We all know the issues with the price of higher education. One small, but still significant, aspect over which instructors may have some level of control is the materials used. The use of Open Educational Resources (OER) is a growing trend that I hope will continue to catch on.
Statistics is about separating the signal from the noise, deciphering what is actually significant versus what is just happening due to random chance. In addition to demonstrating the basic concepts needed to do that, this book attempts to focus on what is significant and eliminate some of the noise that may commonly be found in many introductory statistics texts. In the realm of introductory statistics there are many OER options available, the most complete being Introductory Statistics from OpenStax and OpenIntro Statistics. While these are both adequate options, the beauty of OER is that you can customize material to the needs of your course and students which is what I have tried to do here. Specific to this book I have “remixed” sections from the aforementioned texts and sprinkled in some thoughts of my own.
The intended audience for Significant Statistics: An Introduction to Statistics includes students who may not have completed a calculus prerequisite. In contrast to similar introductory statistics texts, this text has an emphasis on data collection, univariate and bivariate descriptives, but does not deeply delve into probability topics. The ideas of simple linear regression are treated non-inferentially and covered early in the chapter dedicated to bivariate data (Ch 3). The text takes a repetitive approach to one-sample inference to drive those basic concepts home. It ends with introductory level material on two-sample inference (Ch 7) and an optional chapter (Chapter 8) with more advanced inference topics such as Chi Squared, ANOVA, and inference for regression which are infrequently covered in an introductory-level statistics course. Please see the introductionfor more details.
I’ve also tried to make this book technology agnostic in order to accommodate a wide variety of preferences. It is my belief that if one understands the concepts, they can figure out how to use any technology to accomplish the task at hand. However, if learners rely on technology when first being introduced to the concepts, true understanding may not be achieved.
I hope you will consider using this text!
Sincerely,
John Morgan Russell
About Open Educational Resources (OER)
OER are free teaching and learning materials that are licensed to allow for revision and reuse. They can be fully self-contained textbooks, videos, quizzes, learning modules, and more. OER are distinct from free online resources in that they permit others to use, copy, distribute, modify, or reuse the content. The legal permission to modify and customize OER to meet the specific learning objectives of a particular course make them a useful pedagogical tool.
About Pressbooks
Pressbooks is an open source, web-based authoring tool based on WordPress. Virginia Tech personnel use it to create and adapt openly licensed course materials. Pressbooks offers an intuitive editing environment for educators interested in customizing this book.
About This Book
Significant Statistics: An Introduction to Statistics is an open textbook. You are welcome to freely use, adapt, and share this book with attribution according to the Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 4.0 (CC BY-SA 4.0) license. This license allows customization and redistribution that is “not primarily intended for or directed toward commercial advantage or monetary compensation.” All figures in this book are licensed under Creative Commons licenses or used under fair use. Please see the end-of-chapter references for license information for each figure before reuse.
Supplemental multimedia material aligned with this textbook including videos, audio-only versions of the videos in podcast format, and PowerPoint lecture notes can be found at:
- Significant Statistics Website
- Significant Statistics YouTube Channel
- Significant Statistics Podcast Channel
Please use the instructor interest form if you are an instructor who is reviewing, using, or adapting Significant Statistics for a course, or if you have created any materials related to this book and would like to share them publicly.
Navigate to the book’s main landing page to access:
- Links to multiple electronic versions of the textbook (PDF, EPUB, HTML)
- A link to order a print copy
- A link to the errata document
- A link to report errors
If you are interested in making your own version of this book, check out the book’s license and information on best practices for attribution.
