Fourth Edition
Myra L. Samuels
Purdue University
Jeffrey A. Witmer
Oberlin College
Andrew A. Schaffner
California Polytechnic State University,
San Luis Obispo
Prentice Hall
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Samuels, Myra L.
Statistics for the life sciences / Myra Samuels, Jeffrey Witmer. -- 4th ed. / Andrew Schaffner.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-321-65280-5
1. Biometry--Textbooks. 2. Medical statistics--Textbooks. 3.
Agriculture--Statistics--Textbooks. I. Witmer, Jeffrey A. II.
Schaffner, Andrew. III. Title.
QH323.5.S23 2012
570.1'5195--dc22
2010003559
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1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10—EB—14 13 12 11 10
ISBN-10: 0-321-65280-0
ISBN-13: 978-0-321-65280-5
, CONTENTS
Preface vii
1 INTRODUCTION 1
1.1 Statistics and the Life Sciences 1
1.2 Types of Evidence 7
1.3 Random Sampling 15
2 DESCRIPTION OF SAMPLES AND POPULATIONS 26
2.1 Introduction 26
2.2 Frequency Distributions 28
2.3 Descriptive Statistics: Measures of Center 40
2.4 Boxplots 45
2.5 Relationships between Variables 52
2.6 Measures of Dispersion 59
2.7 Effect of Transformation of Variables (Optional) 68
2.8 Statistical Inference 73
2.9 Perspective 79
3 PROBABILITY AND THE BINOMIAL DISTRIBUTION 84
3.1 Probability and the Life Sciences 84
3.2 Introduction to Probability 84
3.3 Probability Rules (Optional) 94
3.4 Density Curves 99
3.5 Random Variables 102
3.6 The Binomial Distribution 107
3.7 Fitting a Binomial Distribution to Data (Optional) 116
4 THE NORMAL DISTRIBUTION 121
4.1 Introduction 121
4.2 The Normal Curves 123
4.3 Areas Under a Normal Curve 125
4.4 Assessing Normality 132
4.5 Perspective 142
iii