Statistics. This item is unavailable.Statistics

Statistics in unusual in its emphasis on the models that underlie statistical inference. The authors make the models comprehensible and show why choosing the wrong model can lead students astray. Carefully constructed exercises in every chapter offer practice in computational skills. Other call for rough estimates and qualitative judgments, so students are forced to come to grips with the concepts instead of mechanically applied formulas. Most sections close with an exercise set; the answers are in the back of the book, often with complete solutions. Chapters also have review exercises, without answers, for homework and tests. Illustrations are in integral part of the exposition. Beginners learn how to read histograms and scatterplots and how to think about these graphics in the context of real problems.

David Freedman was born in Boto ani, Romania, as the first child and only son of Sara and Israel Freedman. Israel, a political refugee, immigrated with his young family to the United States in 1900, where four years later, David s sister Sophie became the first Freedman born in the U.S. Freedman graduated from the City College of New York in 1918, the first in his family to complete a formal education beyond high school. In September 1918, he married Beatrice (née Rebecca Goodman), a fellow New Yorker, who was born in the city on September 27, 1899 (her parents had fled from Kishinev, Russian Empire). Within five years they had three sons, Benedict (1919 2012), David Noel (1922 2008), and Toby (1924 2011). A decade later their only daughter, who is now known as Laurie Hayden, arrived. From 1924 on, Freedman was a self-employed writer. He created sketches for musicals and had shows on Broadway almost every year from 1926 through 1937. His novel Mendel Marantz (1925) featured a Jewish father who frequently made witty remarks. His first play, Mendel, Inc., debuted in 1929. When radio replaced vaudeville, Freedman who already enjoyed a reputation as a popular, versatile writer was ready for the new medium. He was prolific, creating as many as six entertainment programs a week for several years, and eventually worked in movies as well. Freedman was also a biographer and wrote about industry insiders. His first biography, the Eddie Cantor memoir My Life Is in Your Hands (1928, "as told to" Freedman by Cantor), became a bestseller and was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. Freedman and Cantor collaborated on a biography of showman Florenz Ziegfeld; Ziegfeld: the Great Glorifier (1934) was used for the film Ziegfeld Follies (1945). Similarly, Phantom Fame which he co-authored with the impresario Harry Reichenbach (1931) became the basis for the movie The Half-Naked Truth (1932). In the mid-1930s Freedman contributed scripts for short comedies produced by Educational Pictures in New York. The best known is probably Blue Blazes (1936), starring Buster Keaton as an inept fireman. Freedman suffered a massive heart attack on the evening of Monday, December 7, 1936. By the morning of the 8th, he was dead, leaving Beatrice, his partner of 18 years, and their four children, who ranged in age from just under 17 to just under 2 years.