ABSTRACT
The goal of statistical inference is to draw conclusions about a population from “representative information” about it. In future chapters, we will discover that a powerful way to obtain representative information about a population is through the planned introduction of chance. Thus, probability is the foundation of statistical inference-to study the latter, we must first study the former. Fortunately, the theory of probability is an especially beautiful branch of mathematics. Although our purpose in studying probability is to provide the reader with some tools that will be needed when we study statistics, we also hope to impart some of the beauty of those tools.
