Exercises and Solutions in Probability and Statistics

by Gary Smith

Overview

The book contains hundreds of engaging, class-tested statistics exercises (and detailed solutions) that test students’ understanding of the material. Many are educational in their own right—for example, baseball managers who played professional ball were often catchers; stocks that are deleted from the Dow Jones Industrial Average have generally done better than the stocks that replaced them; athletes may not get hot hands but they often get warm hands with modest improvements in their success probabilities.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781041048336
Publisher:	CRC Press
Publication date:	09/01/2025
Series:	Chapman & Hall/CRC Texts in Statistical Science
Pages:	300
Product dimensions:	6.12(w) x 9.19(h) x (d)

About the Author

Gary Smith is the Fletcher Jones Professor of Economics at Pomona College. He has won two teaching awards and written (or co-authored) more than 100 academic papers and 20 books. His statistical and financial research has been featured in various media, including The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Wired, NPR Tech Nation, NBC Bay Area, CNBC, WYNC, WBBR Bloomberg Radio, NBC Think, Silicon Valley Insider, Motley Fool, Scientific American, Forbes, MarketWatch, MoneyCentral.msn, NewsWeek, Fast Company, The Economist, MindMatters, OZY, Slate, and BusinessWeek.

Table of Contents

Introduction   1. Mean, Median, Descriptive Statistics   2. Graphs Good, Bad, and Ugly   3. Misleading Data   4. Probabilities   5. Bayes’ Rule   6. Monty Hall Problems   7. Binomial Distribution   8. Law of Averages   9. Normal Distribution   10. One-Sample Tests and CIs   11. Two-Sample Tests and CIs   12. Chi-Square Tests   13. Simple Regression   14. Regression Toward the Mean   15. Multiple Regression   16. Miscellaneous   17. Out-of-Class Projects

Editorial Reviews

"As a statistics teacher, I'm always on the lookout for accessible yet challenging problems for students to chew on in class. The problems in this book are wonderful: they're clear, they test important concepts in statistics, and they require insight without being tricky." — Andrew Gelman, Professor of Statistics and Political Science, Columbia University, Author of Active Statistics: Stories, Games, Problems

"Writing great test questions can among the most challenging aspects of teaching. We draw on Smith’s collection extensively in our “Calling Bullshit” course on data reasoning. Perhaps I should not disclose the source of my exam questions — but if any of my students choose to seek an advantage by reading Smith’s book from cover to cover, they’ll learn more by doing so than I could hope to teach them in a quarter." — Carl T. Bergstrom, Professor of Biology, University of Washington, Author of Calling Bullshit: The Art of Skepticism in a Data-Driven World

"A treasure-trove; a gold mine!  Buy this book if you want questions that require critical thinking (rather than multiple-choice guessing). Hundreds of questions and answers carefully organized by topic.   Every one teaching introductory statistics should own a copy of this book!" — Milo Shield, American Statistical Association Fellow, Visiting Professor, New College of Florida, Author of Statistical Literacy and Editor of www.StatLit.org

"Most professors can write tests that measure knowledge, but Gary Smith's questions often go well beyond this to measure a student's ability to use this knowledge. What a remarkable collection of superb thought-provoking questions!" — Woody Studenmund, Professor of Economics, Occidental College, Author of Using Econometrics

"The unique features of these exam questions are their origins in everyday life and insights into ferreting whether students know the subject and can apply it in nonrobotic ways. I wish I had access to this test bank when I began teaching." — William E. Becker, Professor Emeritus of Economics, Indiana University, Past Editor, The Journal of Economics Education

"Professor Smith's questions draw upon interesting real-world scenarios to test students' understanding of key statistical concepts. I wish I had had this collection when I first started teaching statistics!" — Alan Reifman, Professor of Human Development & Family Sciences, Texas Tech University, Author of Hot Hand: The Statistics Behind Sports' Greatest Streaks

From the Publisher