In 2009, after teaching my first course at Columbia University, I was asked by the Chair of the statistics department to teach a course titled “Introduction to Statistical Reasoning”, a course with “an emphasis on developing statistical intuition rather than on mathematical rigor”.

My book titled “Statistical Thinking through Media Examples” grew out of my experience teaching this course over 14 years to a broad audience of students. It was written in an engaging narrative format through media, research and real world data examples, with a minimum of basic calculations. It teaches students how to be educated consumers of statistical information by understanding:

1. The importance of going beyond the news headlines to the source of the research to critically assess study design and data quality
2. How to reason with variation in measurements using summary statistics and data visualizations, to see the story in the data
3. The logical reasoning of hypothesis testing and how it can get manipulated
4. How to reason with the doubt or uncertainty about how the world works, using data and statistics, in order to make informed decisions
5. To develop strong statistical (and scientific) thinking skills to see through the noise and get at the truth   

In the video below, I discuss why I decided to write my book and give a short presentation on how I use it in the classroom. I also discuss the resources available to professors interested in adopting it for their course(s).