Best Statistics

n this stunning new book, Malcolm Gladwell takes us on an intellectual journey through the world of "outliers"--the best and the brightest, the most famous and the most successful. Amazon Best of the Month, November 2008 : Now that he's gotten us talking about the viral life of ideas and the power of gut reactions , Malcolm Gladwell poses a more provocative question in Outliers : why do some people succeed, living remarkably productive and impactful lives, while so many more never reach their potential? Outliers can be enjoyed for its bits of trivia, like why most pro hockey players were born in January, how many hours of practice it takes to master a skill, why the descendents of Jewish immigrant garment workers became the most powerful lawyers in New York, how a pilots' culture impacts their crash record, how a centuries-old culture of rice farming helps Asian kids master math. Signature Reviewed by Leslie ChangIn Outliers , Gladwell ( The Tipping Point ) once again proves masterful in a genre he essentially pioneered—the book that illuminates secret patterns behind everyday phenomena. Through case studies ranging from Canadian junior hockey champions to the robber barons of the Gilded Age, from Asian math whizzes to software entrepreneurs to the rise of his own family in Jamaica, Gladwell tears down the myth of individual merit to explore how culture, circumstance, timing, birth and luck account for success—and how historical legacies can hold others back despite ample individual gifts. In seeking to understand why Asian children score higher on math tests, Gladwell explores the persistence and painstaking labor required to cultivate rice as it has been done in East Asia for thousands of years; though fascinating in its details, the study does not prove that a rice-growing heritage explains math prowess, as Gladwell asserts.

n this stunning new book, Malcolm Gladwell takes us on an intellectual journey through the world of "outliers"--the best and the brightest, the most famous and the most successful. Amazon Best of the Month, November 2008 : Now that he's gotten us talking about the viral life of ideas and the power of gut reactions , Malcolm Gladwell poses a more provocative question in Outliers : why do some people succeed, living remarkably productive and impactful lives, while so many more never reach their potential? Outliers can be enjoyed for its bits of trivia, like why most pro hockey players were born in January, how many hours of practice it takes to master a skill, why the descendents of Jewish immigrant garment workers became the most powerful lawyers in New York, how a pilots' culture impacts their crash record, how a centuries-old culture of rice farming helps Asian kids master math. Signature Reviewed by Leslie ChangIn Outliers , Gladwell ( The Tipping Point ) once again proves masterful in a genre he essentially pioneered—the book that illuminates secret patterns behind everyday phenomena. Through case studies ranging from Canadian junior hockey champions to the robber barons of the Gilded Age, from Asian math whizzes to software entrepreneurs to the rise of his own family in Jamaica, Gladwell tears down the myth of individual merit to explore how culture, circumstance, timing, birth and luck account for success—and how historical legacies can hold others back despite ample individual gifts. In seeking to understand why Asian children score higher on math tests, Gladwell explores the persistence and painstaking labor required to cultivate rice as it has been done in East Asia for thousands of years; though fascinating in its details, the study does not prove that a rice-growing heritage explains math prowess, as Gladwell asserts.

Rebecca M. Warner's Applied Statistics: From Bivariate Through Multivariate Techniques, Second Edition provides a clear introduction to widely used topics in bivariate and multivariate statistics, including multiple regression, discriminant analysis, MANOVA, factor analysis, and binary logistic regression. She is a Fellow in the Association for Psychological Science and a member of the American Psychological Association, the International Association for Relationships Research, the Society of Experimental Social Psychology, and the Society for Personality and Social Psychology.

The book walks readers through various statistical procedures, beginning with simple descriptive statistics, correlations, and graphical representations of data, and ending with inferential techniques, analysis of variance, and a new introductory chapter on working with large datasets and data mining using Excel. I enthusiastically recommended it for anyone interested in the subject and even (and especially) for those who aren't!--Russ Shafer-Landau Statistics for People who (Think They) Hate Statistics is definitely the right book for people who have to overcome that familiar anxious feeling when opening a standard statistics book and who having finally managed to do so are still not able to make much sense of it all. I enthusiastically recommended it for anyone interested in the subject and even (and especially) for those who aren′t! Statistics for People who (Think They) Hate Statistics is definitely the right book for people who have to overcome that familiar anxious feeling when opening a standard statistics book and who having finally managed to do so are still not able to make much sense of it all.

Freakonomics is a groundbreaking collaboration between Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner, an award-winning author and journalist. Thus the new field of study contained in this book: freakonomics.Through forceful storytelling and wry insight, Levitt and Dubner show that economics is, at root, the study of incentives—how people get what they want, or need, especially when other people want or need the same thing. What unites all these stories is a belief that the modern world, despite a great deal of complexity and downright deceit, is not impenetrable, is not unknowable, and—if the right questions are asked—is even more intriguing than we think. Freakonomics establishes this unconventional premise: If morality represents how we would like the world to work, then economics represents how it actually does work. It will literally redefine the way we view the modern world.Bonus material added to the revised and expanded 2006 edition.The original New York Times Magazine article about Steven D. Levitt by Stephen J. Dubner, which led to the creation of this book.Seven “Freakonomics” columns written for the New York Times Magazine, published between August 2005 and April 2006. “Levitt dissects complex real-world phenomena, e.g. baby-naming patterns and Sumo wrestling, with an economist’s laser.” (San Diego Union-Tribune). This is bracing fun of the highest order.” (Kurt Andersen, host of public radio's Studio 360 and author of Turn of the Century). “Freakonomics challenges conventional wisdom and makes for fun reading.” (Book Sense Picks and Notables). Steven D. Levitt, a professor of economics at the University of Chicago, was awarded the John Bates Clark Medal, given to the most influential American economist under forty. Stephen J. Dubner, an award-winning journalist and radio and TV personality, has worked for the New York Times and published three non- Freakonomics books.

From a former marine and Yale Law School graduate, a powerful account of growing up in a poor Rust Belt town that offers a broader, probing look at the struggles of America’s white working class. They raised a middle-class family, and eventually their grandchild (the author) would graduate from Yale Law School, a conventional marker of their success in achieving generational upward mobility. Vance’s grandparents, aunt, uncle, sister, and, most of all, his mother, struggled profoundly with the demands of their new middle-class life, and were never able to fully escape the legacy of abuse, alcoholism, poverty, and trauma so characteristic of their part of America. ''[A] compassionate, discerning sociological analysis...Combining thoughtful inquiry with firsthand experience, Mr. Vance has inadvertently provided a civilized reference guide for an uncivilized election, and he's done so in a vocabulary intelligible to both Democrats and Republicans. ( Jennifer Senior, New York Times ). ''[ Hillbilly Elegy ] is a beautiful memoir but it is equally a work of cultural criticism about white working-class America....[Vance] offers a compelling explanation for why it's so hard for someone who grew up the way he did to make it...a riveting book.''. ''[An] understated, engaging debut...An unusually timely and deeply affecting view of a social class whose health and economic problems are making headlines in this election year.''. ''Vance compellingly describes the terrible toll that alcoholism, drug abuse, and an unrelenting code of honor took on his family, neither excusing the behavior nor condemning it...The portrait that emerges is a complex one...Unerringly forthright, remarkably insightful, and refreshingly focused, Hillbilly Elegy is the cry of a community in crisis.''. ''A beautifully and powerfully written memoir about the author's journey from a troubled, addiction-torn Appalachian family to Yale Law School, Hillbilly Elegy is shocking, heartbreaking, gut-wrenching, and hysterically funny. It's also a profoundly important book, one that opens a window on a part of America usually hidden from view and offers genuine hope in the form of hard-hitting honesty. From a former marine and Yale Law School graduate, a probing look at the struggles of America’s white working class through the author’s own story of growing up in a poor Rust Belt town. The disintegration of this group, a process that has been slowly occurring now for over forty years, has been reported with growing frequency and alarm, but has never before been written about as searingly from the inside. J.D.’s grandparents were “dirt poor and in love” and moved north from Kentucky’s Appalachia region to Ohio in the hopes of escaping the dreadful poverty around them. They raised a middle-class family, and eventually one of their grandchildren would graduate from Yale Law School, a conventional marker of success in achieving generational upward mobility. But as the family saga of Hillbilly Elegy plays out, we learn that J.D.’s grandparents, aunt, uncle, sister, and, most of all, his mother struggled profoundly with the demands of their new middle-class life, never fully escaping the legacy of abuse, alcoholism, poverty, and trauma so characteristic of their part of America. A deeply moving memoir, with its share of humor and vividly colorful figures, Hillbilly Elegy is the story of how upward mobility really feels.

This true story about the power of random acts of kindness will warm the heart, a beautiful reminder of the miracles of Christmas and the gift of family during the holiday season. "The book's simple prose and profound message will fill even the Grinch-iest hearts with Christmas spirit while affirming the age-old adage, it really is the thought that counts." Joanne Smith deftly reconciles the difficult terrain that ranges between the Christmas we all want and the tragedies of life that sooner or later beset us all. As a veteran devourer of Christmas stories short and long, fictional and true, I mistakenly assumed I'd encountered every conceivable plot variant in the genre. Joanne Hurst Smith's wondrous story hit me from so many directions, playing on the strings of so many emotions, that it left me limp at the end Quite simply, it is a masterpiece .” -- Joe L. Wheeler, Ph.D., author of the bestselling Christmas in My Heart ® series. "For readers of Richard Paul Evans and Greg Kincaid comes The 13th Gift , a heartwarming Christmas memoir about how a random act of kindness transformed one of the bleakest moments in a family's history into a time of strength and love." She earned a bachelor's degree in English at Wright State University and worked as a reporter for the Dayton Daily News .

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A timely and important new book that challenges everything we think we know about cultivating true belonging in our communities, organizations, and culture, from the #1 bestselling author of Rising Strong, Daring Greatly, and The Gifts of Imperfection HELLO SUNSHINE BOOK CLUB PICK “True belonging doesn’t require us to change who we are. She writes, “True belonging requires us to believe in and belong to ourselves so fully that we can find sacredness both in being a part of something and in standing alone when necessary. Praise for Brené Brown’s Rising Strong “[Brown’s] research and work have given us a new vocabulary, a way to talk with each other about the ideas and feelings and fears we’ve all had but haven’t quite known how to articulate. Thankfully, Brené Brown is there with an outstretched arm to help us up.” —Simon Sinek, author of Start with Why and Leaders Eat Last. Brené Brown, PhD, LMSW, is a research professor at the University of Houston where she holds the Huffington Foundation–Brené Brown Endowed Chair at the Graduate College of Social Work.

With stunning historical detail, Wilkerson tells this story through the lives of three unique individuals: Ida Mae Gladney, who in 1937 left sharecropping and prejudice in Mississippi for Chicago, where she achieved quiet blue-collar success and, in old age, voted for Barack Obama when he ran for an Illinois Senate seat; sharp and quick-tempered George Starling, who in 1945 fled Florida for Harlem, where he endangered his job fighting for civil rights, saw his family fall, and finally found peace in God; and Robert Foster, who left Louisiana in 1953 to pursue a medical career, the personal physician to Ray Charles as part of a glitteringly successful medical career, which allowed him to purchase a grand home where he often threw exuberant parties. A Look Inside The Warmth of Other Suns The author's father as a Tuskegee Airman George Starling as a young manThe author's mother at Meridian Hill The author’s mother at Howard University with friends A migrant man studying a mapA migrant man packing his suitcaseIda Mae Brandon Gladney as a young womanRobert Joseph Pershing Foster as a young physician Starred Review.

Painstakingly honest, this chilling memoir reveals how a teenager became immersed in the bizarre life of legendary porn star John Holmes. The 2003 movie Wonderland vivified Schiller's teenage experience under the thrall of a drug-addled porn star in L.A. in the late 1970s, while this long docudrama expands on that raw era to include her peripatetic, dysfunctional upbringing and aftermath as a survivor. The daughter of a Vietnam vet and a German woman he met and married overseas, Schiller spent her early years moving around to accommodate her father's military career, especially between New Jersey and the suburbs of Miami. Instead, Schiller, who met Holmes in 1976 when she was just 15, details their five-year love affair, the stability he provided in the wake of her troubled childhood, and the deterioration of their relationship after Homes became addicted to cocaine and was ultimately arrested.

The bestselling author of The Sign and the Seal reveals the true origins of civilization. Praise for Fingerprints of the Gods: "A fancy piece of historical sleuthing...intriguing and entertaining and sturdy enough to give a long pause for thought."

From a renowned historian comes a groundbreaking narrative of humanity’s creation and evolution—a #1 international bestseller—that explores the ways in which biology and history have defined us and enhanced our understanding of what it means to be “human.”. From examining the role evolving humans have played in the global ecosystem to charting the rise of empires, Sapiens integrates history and science to reconsider accepted narratives, connect past developments with contemporary concerns, and examine specific events within the context of larger ideas. Tackling evolutionary concepts from a historian’s perspective, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind , describes human development through a framework of three not-necessarily-orthodox “Revolutions”: the Cognitive, the Agricultural, and the Scientific. His ideas are interesting and often amusing: Why have humans managed to build astonishingly large populations when other primate groups top out at 150 individuals? Because our talent for gossip allows us to build networks in societies too large for personal relationships between everyone, and our universally accepted “imagined realities”--such as money, religion, and Limited Liability Corporations—keep us in line. Though the concepts are unusual and sometimes heavy (as is the book, literally) Harari’s deft prose and wry, subversive humor make quick work of material prone to academic tedium. He’s written a book of popular nonfiction (it was a bestseller overseas, no doubt in part because his conclusions draw controversy) landing somewhere in the middle of a Venn diagram of genetics, sociology, and history. An engrossing read.” (Dan Ariely, New York Times Bestselling author of Predictably Irrational, The Upside of Irrationality , and The Honest Truth About Dishonesty ). “Yuval Noah Harari’s celebrated Sapiens does for human evolution what Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History of Time did for physics.… He does a superb job of outlining our slow emergence and eventual domination of the planet.” ( Forbes ). “Writing with wit and verve, Harari…attempts to explain how Homo sapiens came to be the dominant species on Earth as well as the sole representative of the human genus.… Provocative and entertaining.” ( Publishers Weekly ). “In this sweeping look at the history of humans, Harari offers readers the chance to reconsider, well, everything, from a look at why Homo sapiens endured to a compelling discussion of how society organizes itself through fictions.” ( Booklist Best Books of the Year).

Using actual case histories of innocent men and women exonerated after decades in prison because of information they voluntarily gave to police, Professor Duane demonstrates the critical importance of a constitutional right not well or widely understood by the average American. “James Duane’s amazing but true stories of innocent people exonerated after decades of wrongful imprisonment (which could have been avoided if they had just insisted on their fundamental right to avoid self-incrimination) are riveting reminders of the high price we pay, as individuals and as a society, when we fail to assert our constitutional rights.” —Laurence H. Tribe, Harvard Law School. You Have the Right to Remain Innocent describes a stream of miscarriages of justice that occurred only because innocent suspects cooperated with deceptive officers preying on their ignorance and good intentions. “Well-informed, scary, sobering, and sure to tick off police officers and prosecutors even as it contributes to keeping innocent people out of jail.” — Kirkus Reviews.

In the revised Fourth Edition of the best-selling text, John W. Creswell and new co-author Cheryl N. Poth explore the philosophical underpinnings, history, and key elements of five qualitative inquiry approaches: narrative research, phenomenology, grounded theory, ethnography, and case study. "The Fourth Edition of Qualitative Inquiry and Research Design is refreshingly readable and will be accessible to students of all levels. --Charles Quist-Adade. "In my teaching experience, I have found this to be the best text for teaching an introductory course in qualitative research, as it demonstrates in a clear and systematic manner how qualitative research can be undertaken in the five most popular approaches in contemporary applied social science research." "Creswell and Poth's newly revised edition of Qualitative Inquiry and Research Design represents an accessible yet in-depth resource for developing an understanding of both the main approaches to qualitative research in the social sciences, as well as the wide variation across and beyond these approaches." -Creswell and Poth's newly revised edition of Qualitative Inquiry and Research Design represents an accessible yet in-depth resource for developing an understanding of both the main approaches to qualitative research in the social sciences, as well as the wide variation across and beyond these approaches.---Kai A. Schafft. "The Fourth Edition of Qualitative Inquiry and Research Design is refreshingly readable and will be accessible to students of all levels. (Charles Quist-Adade). "In my teaching experience, I have found this to be the best text for teaching an introductory course in qualitative research, as it demonstrates in a clear and systematic manner how qualitative research can be undertaken in the five most popular approaches in contemporary applied social science research." "Creswell and Poth’s newly revised edition of Qualitative Inquiry and Research Design represents an accessible yet in-depth resource for developing an understanding of both the main approaches to qualitative research in the social sciences, as well as the wide variation across and beyond these approaches."

Decades before the American Revolution, Benjamin Franklin lamented that English settlers were constantly fleeing over to the Indians-but Indians almost never did the same. Tribal society has been exerting an almost gravitational pull on Westerners for hundreds of years, and the reason lies deep in our evolutionary past as a communal species. "Junger has raised one of the most provocative ideas of this campaign season--and accidentally written one of its most intriguing political books. "― The New York Times "There are three excellent reasons to read Sebastian Junger's new book: the clarity of his thought, the elegance of his prose, and the provocativeness of his chosen subject. "Compelling...Junger...offers a starting point for mending some of the toxic divisiveness rampant in our current political and cultural climate. "TRIBE is a fascinating, eloquent and thought-provoking book..packed with ideas...It could help us to think more deeply about how to help men and women battered by war to find a new purpose in peace. Sebastian Junger is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Tribe , War , The Perfect Storm , Fire, and A Death in Belmont .

The 40th anniversary edition of the classic Newbery Medal-winning title by beloved author Katherine Paterson, with brand-new bonus materials including an author's note by Katherine herself and a foreword by New York Times bestselling author Kate DiCamillo. Here they reign as king and queen, fighting off imaginary giants and the walking dead, sharing stories and dreams, and plotting against the schoolmates who tease them. Together, they create an imaginary, secret kingdom in the woods called Terabithia that can be reached only by swinging across a creek bed on a rope. But one morning a tragic accident befalls Leslie as she ventures alone to Terabithia, and Jess's life is changed forever. Contemporary instrumental interludes featuring guitar, piano and drums signal the beginning and end of each tape side.

Societies that had had a head start in food production advanced beyond the hunter-gatherer stage, and then developed religion --as well as nasty germs and potent weapons of war --and adventured on sea and land to conquer and decimate preliterate cultures. Most of this work deals with non-Europeans, but Diamond's thesis sheds light on why Western civilization became hegemonic: "History followed different courses for different peoples because of differences among peoples' environments, not because of biological differences among peoples themselves."

This bold, contrarian view, backed up by exhaustive research, introduces our near-term future, where exponentially growing technologies and three other powerful forces are conspiring to better the lives of billions. Examining human need by category—water, food, energy, healthcare, education, freedom—Diamandis and Kotler introduce dozens of innovators making great strides in each area: Larry Page, Steven Hawking, Dean Kamen, Daniel Kahneman, Elon Musk, Bill Joy, Stewart Brand, Jeff Skoll, Ray Kurzweil, Ratan Tata, Craig Venter, among many, many others. "This engaging book is a needed corrective, a whirlwind tour of the latest developments in health care, agriculture, energy, and other fields as well as an introduction to thinkers and innovators such as Daniel Kahneman, Ray Kurzweil, and Craig Ventor."