ABSTRACT
My aim in this book has been to help interested students and colleagues think statistically. Thinking statistically can have substantial benefits in terms of clarifying our work and, indeed, clarifying our own thinking. One of the blogs that I read religiously is Paul Krugman’s, the Nobel Prize-winning economist. He emphasizes the importance of having a model in his writings on economics. The point is, of course, that data do not speak for themselves. Data mean something when they are collected in terms of a theory and combined with other data using a well-specified model. The model might be wrong, but it is good to think with. It helps us to refine our thinking and direct us toward a better model.
