SAS Press, so many people have contributed to the planning and execution of the book in its development. For this edition, Sian Roberts is now Publisher. Suzanne Morgen handled the copyediting, Denise Jones the production, Robert Harris the cover design, and Missy Hannah the marketing effort.
Earlier editions were shaped and tended by Shelley Sessoms, Stacey Hamilton, Shelly Goodin, Mary Beth Steinbach, Cindy Puryear, Brenna Leath, Brad Kellam, Candy Farrell, Patrice Cherry, and Jennifer Dilley. My enduring thanks go to them all.
Many other professionals at JMP have influenced and informed the content of this book at critical points along the way. I am very grateful to John Sall, Xan Gregg, Jon Weisz, Brad Jones, Brady Brady, Jonathan Gatlin, Jeff Perkinson, Ian Cox, Chuck Pirrello, Brian Corcoran, Christopher Gotwalt, Curt Hinrichs, Mia Stephens, Volker Kraft, Julian Parris, Ruth Hummel, Kathleen Watts, Mary Loveless, Gail Massari, Lori Harris, Holly McGill, Peng Liu, and Eric Hill for encouraging me, answering my questions, setting me straight, and listening to my thoughts. To this group I send a special shout-out to JMP Senior Systems Engineer Rob Lievense, who has been a consistent advocate and supporter of this work.
I am especially thankful for the care and attention of those people who have reviewed this and the prior editions. Technical reviews of the current edition were provided by Mark Bailey, Duane Hayes, and Kristen Bradford. Mark has been the constant among reviewers, having made invaluable recommendations to all three editions. Performing double duty on the first two editions were Tonya Mauldin and Sue Walsh. Fang Chen, Paul Marovich, and Volker Kraft rounded out the many superb reviewers. Collectively, their critiques tightened and improved this book, and whatever deficiencies that may remain are entirely mine.
Naturally, the completion of a book requires time, space, and an amenable environment. I want to express public thanks to three institutions that provided facilities, time, and atmospherics suitable for steady work on this project. My home institution, Stonehill College, was exceptionally supportive, particularly through the efforts of Provost Joe Favazza and my chairperson, Debra Salvucci, and Department Administrative Assistant Carolyn McGuinness. Colleagues Dick Gariepy and Michael Salé generously tested several chapters and problems in their classrooms, and Jan Harrison and Susan Wall of our IT Department eased several technical aspects of this project as well.
Colleagues and students at the International Business School at Brandeis University sharpened my pedagogy and inspired numerous examples found in the book. During a sabbatical leave from Stonehill, Babson College was good enough to offer a visiting position and a wonderful place to write the first edition. For that opportunity, thanks go to Provost Shahid Ansari, former chairperson Norean Radke Sharpe, then-chair Steve Ericksen, and colleagues John McKenzie and George Recck.
During the summer of 2013, the Stonehill Undergraduate Research Experience (SURE) program provided a grant to support this work with time, space, and finances. Carolyn Moodie (Class of 2015) was a superior and self-directed research collaborator, assisting in the critical phases of problem formulation, data identification, data cleaning and exploratory analysis. Carolyn also brought a keen eye to editorial tasks, and willingly gave her feedback on which topics student readers might find engaging. Thanks also to Bonnie Troupe for her skillful administration of the SURE program. During the spring and summer of 2013, Stonehill students Dan Doherty, Erin Hollander, and Tate Molaghan also pitched in with editorial and research assistance.
Special acknowledgment also goes to former Stonehill students from BUS207 (Intermediate Statistics) who “road tested” several chapters, and very considerable thanks to three students who assisted greatly in shaping prose and examples, as well as developing solutions to scenario problems: Frank Groccia, Dan Bouchard, and Matt Arey. Later students in BUS206 (Quantitative Analysis for Business) at Stonehill also class-tested several chapters and exercises.
Several of the data tables came through the gracious permission of their original authors and compilers. I gratefully acknowledge the permission granted by my good friend George Aronson for the Maine SW table; by Prof. Max A. Little for the Parkinson’s disease vocal data; by Prof. Jesper Rydén for the Sonatas data table (from which the Haydn and Mozart tables were extracted); by Prof. John Holcomb for the North Carolina birth weight data; and by Prof. I-Cheng Yeh for the Concrete table and the two subsets from that data.
In recent years, my thoughts about what is important in statistics education have been radically reshaped by colleagues in the ISOSTAT listserv and the Consortium for the Advancement of Undergraduate Statistics Education (CAUSE) and the U.S. Conference on Teaching Statistics that CAUSE organizes every two years. The May 2013 CAUSE-sponsored workshop “Teaching the Statistical Investigation Process with Randomization-Based Inference” given by Beth Chance, Allan Rossman, and Nathan Tintle influenced some of the changes in my presentation of inference. Over an even longer period, our local group of New England Isolated Statisticians and the great work of the ASA’s Section on Statistics Education influence me daily in the classroom and at the keyboard.
Finally, it is a pleasure to thank my family. My sons, Sam and Ben, keep me modest and regularly provide inspiration and insight. My wife Donna—partner, friend, wordsmith extraordinaire—has my love and thanks for unflagging encouragement, support, and warmth. This book is dedicated to them.
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About The Author
Robert Carver is Professor Emeritus of Business Administration at Stonehill College in Easton, Massachusetts, and he recently retired as a senior lecturer at the Brandeis University International Business School in Waltham, Massachusetts. At both institutions, he was instrumental in establishing programs in Data Science and Business Analytics, taught courses on quantitative methods in addition to general management courses, and won teaching awards at both schools. His primary research interest is statistics education. A JMP user since 2006, Carver holds an AB in political science from Amherst College in Amherst, Massachusetts, and an MPP and PhD in public policy from the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor.
Learn more about this author by visiting his author page at support.sas.com/carver. There you can download free book excerpts, access example code and data, read the latest reviews, get updates, and more.
Chapter 1: Getting Started: Data Analysis with JMP
