Exploratory data analysis
The e-book starts with graphical and numerical summaries of data sets to help extract useful information from their variables.
Data collection
Statisticians should be involved before any data are collected. Statistical principles can be applied to the data collection process that ensure that the resulting data can be meaningfully analysed. Chapters 7 and 8 explore the idea of random sampling and describe some principles that should be followed in data collection.
Inference
Data are often considered to be representative of some underlying process or population. The data are treated as a random sample and would be different if the data were collected again. Methods to get information about the population from a single sample are collectively called inference.