<p>This is a short Preface, because most of what is usually said in the Pref- ace is in the first chapter: the goals of the book, its methods, and a sneak preview of the chapters. We ve both taught beginning courses in statistics for many years, and we ve listened to complaints from students about &quot;imponderable&quot; textbooks. We ve answered thousands of questions begin- ning, &quot;What do the authors mean here?&quot; and we ve sympathized with those for whom most textbooks on this subject bring on an anxiety attack. So we wrote our own statistics book. We started off with the idea that we would try to explain concepts well enough so that the student could lean on the book instead of the teacher. Many of our explanations may be long- winded, and sometimes we use three examples to make a point when per- haps one would do, but neither of us believes it possible to overexplain statistics. So if you ll bear with our surplus examples and copious explana- tions, we think we can learn statistics together and enjoy doing it! Our approach uses intuitive explanations, extensions of something you already know, instead of complicated statistical proofs. When something cannot be explained in this commonsense manner, we leave it out. You will find nearly a thousand text problems and exercises in our book. They cover the widest possible range of topic areas, all the way from abortion to X-rays--nearly one hundred different facets of our lives. If you want to get a quick idea of these different areas, turn to the front endpapers and look at the Index of Applications. Many entries, such as biology, eco- nomics, education, government, medicine, and psychology, are fields we encounter or read about every day. But some are newer concerns, such as communication, computers, consumer protection, ecology, energy, envi- ronment, housing, nuclear power, population, and solar heat, where a lot of the action is today.</p>