There are many books which set out the more commonly used statistical methods in a form suitable for applications. There are also widely available computer packages for implementing these techniques in a relatively painless way. We have in the present book concentrated not so much on the techniques themselves but rather on the general issues involved in their fruitful application.
The book is in two parts, the first dealing with general ideas and principles and the second with a range of examples, all, however, involving fairly small sets of data and fairly standard techniques. After some hesitation we have decided to say virtually nothing about detailed computation. This is partly because the procedures readily available will be different in different institutions.
Many of the examples depend in some way on application of the method of least squares or analysis of variance or maximum likelihood. Some familiarity with these is assumed, references being given for specific points.
The examples all illustrate real applications of statistical methods to some branch of science or technology, although in a few cases fictitious data have been supplied. The main general limitation on the examples is, as noted above, that inevitably they all involve quite small amounts of data, and important aspects of statistical analysis specific to large amounts of data are therefore not well covered. There is the further point that in practice over-elaboration of analysis is to be avoided. With very small sets of data, simple graphs and summary statistics may tell all, yet we have regarded it as legitimate for illustration in some cases to apply rather more elaborate analyses than in practice would be justified.