To the Student,

For most students, statistical tests remain a ‘black box’ into which they feed data and harvest the output with little understanding of what the ‘black box’ is doing or why it works. This lack of understanding can lead to egregious errors and unwarranted conclusions about the outcome of a study.

The goal of this book is to provide you, the student, with a basic understanding and/or appreciation of the theoretical concepts upon which statistical analyses are based so that you will not commit such errors. Admittedly, most students in the social and natural sciences do not have extensive training in mathematics. Fortunately, innovative platforms such as Wolfram’s Mathematica, provide marvelous ways of illustrating basic statistical concepts, and demonstrating how they work, so with only a basic working knowledge of algebra, one can begin to make sense of and master the ‘black box’ of statistics and research design.