By Jeff Bennett

The keys to success in your statistics course include approaching the material with an open and optimistic frame of mind, paying close attention to how useful and enjoyable statistics can be in your life, and studying effectively and efficiently. The following sections offer a few specific hints that may be of use as you study.

Before we get into more general strategies for studying, here are a few guidelines that will help you use this book most effectively.

• Before doing any assigned exercises, read assigned material twice.
  • On the first pass, read quickly to gain a "feel" for the material and concepts presented.
  • On the second pass, read the material in more depth and work through the examples carefully.
• During the second reading, take notes that will help you when you go back to study later. In particular:
  • Use the margins! The wide margins in this textbook are designed to give you plenty of room for making notes as you study.

  • Don’t highlight — underline! Using a pen or pencil to underline material requires greater care than highlighting and therefore helps to keep you alert as you study.
• After you complete the reading, and again when studying for exams, make sure you can answer the review questions at the end of each unit.

• You’ll learn best by doing, so do plenty of the end-of-section exercises and the end-of-chapter review exercises. In particular, try some of the exercises that have answers in the back of the book, in addition to any exercises assigned by your instructor.

Budgeting Your Time

A general rule of thumb for college classes is that you should expect to study about 2 to 3 hours per week outside class for each unit of credit. Based on this rule of thumb, a student taking 15 credit hours should expect to spend 30 to 45 hours each week studying outside of class. Combined with time in class, this works out to a total of 45 to 60 hours spent on academic work —not much more than the time required of a typical job, and you get to choose your own hours. Of course, if you are working while you attend school, you will need to budget your time carefully. As a rough guideline, your studying time might be divided as follows.

If you find that you are spending fewer hours than these guidelines suggest, you can probably improve your grade by studying more. If you are spending more hours than these guidelines suggest, you may be studying inefficiently; in that case, you should talk to your instructor about how to study more effectively.

• Don’t miss class. Listening to lectures and participating in discussions is much more effective than reading someone else’s notes. Active participation will help you retain what your are learning.
• Budget your time effectively. An hour or two each day is more effective, and far less painful, than studying all night before homework is due or before exams.
• If a concept gives you trouble, do additional reading or problem solving beyond what has been assigned. And if you still have trouble, ask for help: you surely can find friends, colleagues, or teachers who will be glad to help you learn.
• Working together with friends can be valuable in helping you to solve difficult problems. However, be sure that you learn with your friends and do not become dependent on them.

• Rework exercises and other assignments; try additional exercises to be sure you understand the concepts. Study your performance on assignments, quizzes, or exams from earlier in the semester.
• Study your notes from lectures and discussions. Pay attention to what your instructor expects you to know for an exam.
• Reread the relevant sections in the textbook, paying special attention to notes you have made in the margins.
• Study individually before joining a study group with friends. Study groups are effective only if every individual comes prepared to contribute.
• Don’t stay up too late before an exam. Don’t eat a big meal within an hour of the exam (thinking is more difficult when blood is being diverted to the digestive system).
• Try to relax before and during the exam. If you have studied effectively, you are capable of doing well. Staying relaxed will help you think clearly.

Data Desk Student Version 6.0 for Windows
ISBN: 0-201-25831-5
Data Desk Student Version 5.0 for the Macintosh
ISBN: 0-201-57124-2
Addison Wesley Longman is pleased to offer another statistical software product, Data Desk Version 5.0 for Macintosh and Data Desk 6.0 for Windows. Data Desk® is an interactive and highly graphical statistics software program originally developed by Paul Velleman, from Cornell University.

Links for Essentials of Statistics Readers

Note: Because of the changing nature of the Internet, these sites may no longer exist or they may exist in different formats.
http://www.minitab.com
Select "Resources," then select "On-Line Library and Data Sources":

• Dr. B's Wide World of Web Data
• DASL, the Data Story and Library
• Statlib
• JASA data (where JASA is the Journal of the American Statistical Association)
• Virtual Statistics Library

http://www.ti.com/calc/
This is the Web site for Texas Instruments calculators, including the TI-83 referred to in the textbook.

http://www.amstat.org/publications/jse/
Use the above address or simply use a search engine for Journal of Statistics Education, which is a "refereed electronic journal of postsecondary teaching of statistics." This journal exists on the Internet, but is not printed.

• Current issue
• Data Archive
• Index
• Search JSE
• JSE Information Service

http://it.stlawu.edu/~rlock/datasurf.html#textbook
This is the web site of Robin Lock at St. Lawrence University, who has developed an excellent search tool for "data surfing."

• Datasets
• Repositories of Datasets
• Textbook Datasets
• Additional Data Sources
• Other Lists of Data Sources
• Search Engines

http://www.stat.ucla.edu
Select the directory item of "Case Studies and Data Sets."

User groups:

• sci.stat.edu
• sci.stat.math

http://lib.stat.cmu.edu
Select Data and Story Library (DASL).