“Written with students and scholars in mind, this text is informative, reader-friendly, and, yes, enjoyable….Stanton emphasizes concepts, not formulas, and promotes hands-on examples. His timely introduction and coverage of the open-source R programming language for statistical data analysis is another strength of this text….This volume will be an invaluable addition to both undergraduate and graduate collections. Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty and professionals.”

—Choice Reviews


“Reasoning with Data takes a careful and principled approach to guiding readers gracefully from the traditional moorings of frequentist statistics into Bayesian analyses and the functionality and frontiers of the R platform. Stanton provides a range of clear explanations, examples, and practice exercises, fueled by his unbounded enthusiasm and rock-solid expertise. This book is an indispensable resource for undergraduate and graduate students across disciplines—as well as researchers—who want to extend their thinking and their research into where the future is headed.”

—Frederick L. Oswald, PhD, Department of Psychology, Rice University


“Offering an up-to-date and refreshing approach, this is a highly useful guide to the statistics our students will be using today, including Bayesian reasoning. Rather than providing an array of equations to memorize, the emphasis is on building conceptual knowledge. The equations that are provided are essential for understanding how to reason with statistics. I plan to use this book as as the text for the first in the series of statistical courses required for our doctoral students in education. It also would be appropriate for advanced undergraduates or anyone who wants to begin to use R. The book has a good focus on Bayesian inference, which is not covered consistently in stats courses, but is critical for the kinds of complex data we use in education and psychology.”

—Carol McDonald Connor, PhD, Chancellor's Professor, School of Education, University of California, Irvine


“What do R and traditional and Bayesian statistics have in common? They allow us to answer questions that are important for science and practice. Stanton has produced a wonderful book that will be useful for students as well as established scholars.”

—Herman Aguinis, PhD, Avram Tucker Distinguished Scholar and Professor of Management, George Washington University School of Business


“This may be an uncommon thing to say about a book on statistics, but Reasoning with Data is enjoyable and entertaining—really! Stanton takes the reader on an experiential hands-on tour of random sampling, statistical inference, and drawing conclusions from numerical results. The concreteness of the presentation and examples will make it easy for the reader to intuitively grasp the fundamental concepts. The book is very timely because both Bayesian inference and R are becoming 'must-have' tools for social and behavioral scientists. At the same time, Stanton provides a solid grounding in the historical approach of null hypothesis significance testing, including both its strengths and weaknesses. This text should have a very wide audience, and would be appropriate as an upper-level undergraduate or entry-level graduate statistics text in any of the social sciences.”

—Emily A. Butler, PhD, Family Studies and Human Development, University of Arizona