Abstract
In the theory of probability we started with knowledge of the chances of an individual outcome—heads or tails—and used this to predict the average behavior of sequences of individual trials. Our assumption that the probability of heads is 0.5 was based both on long and varied experience in tossing coins and on our intuitive feeling for the physics involved in tossing flat disk-shaped objects whose opposite sides are not very different.
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Reference Notes
Darrel Huff and Irving Geis, How to Lie with Statistics (New York: W. W. Norton, 1954).
Suggested Reading
Tippet, L. H. C. Statistics. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1968.
Huff, Darrel, and Irving Geis. How to Lie with Statistics. New York: W. W. Norton, 1954.
Freedman, David, Robert Pisani, and Roger Purves. Statistics. New York: W. W. Norton, 1978.
The book by Freedman et al. is a text for a statistics course requiring the minimum of prior mathematical training. It is clear and readable.
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© 1984 Springer Science+Business Media New York
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Goldstein, M., Goldstein, I. (1984). Statistics. In: The Experience of Science. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4899-0384-6_9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4899-0384-6_9
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