After discussing the importance of chance in experimentation, the text develops basic tools of probability. The plug-in principle then provides a transition from populations to samples, motivating a variety of summary statistics and diagnostic techniques. The heart of the text is a careful exposition of point estimation, hypothesis testing, and confidence intervals. The author then explains procedures for 1- and 2-sample location problems, analysis of variance, goodness-of-fit, and correlation and regression. He concludes by discussing the role of simulation in modern statistical inference.

Focusing on the assumptions that underlie popular statistical methods, this textbook explains how and why these methods are used to analyze experimental data.