A clear, conversational tone and informal flavor allows students to see the logical sense of the techniques they are encountering. Students understand how and why each technique works and when to use it. The cases in the text are based on real-life situations, and the applications are of high interest to students. Pelosi & Sandifer use real data from their own experiences in the examples and exercises. Drawing on years of teaching experience, the authors create a discovery based model that encourages students to take an active approach to gain a basic understanding of each concept. Then, students are asked to test their knowledge and make decisions based on what they've learned. Each chapter includes robust pedagogy: An Opening Story that motivates the material and focuses the student. Try It Now! Exercises immediately reinforce concepts and allows students to check their understanding of key points in the text. Examples and Exercises demonstrate step-by-step techniques in action. Discovery Exercises highlight the learp from discovery to decision. They can be used as case studies or group work. Chapter-ending Exercises for testing and review. The exercises blend computational and activity-based problems, and make use of real-world data sets provided on an accompanying CD. Get It In Writing features at the end of each chapter highlight the importance of communicating results. A capstone Chapter 16, Making Your Case, gives students the chance to put all they've learned into a complete whole with cases requiring the use of a variety of tools introduced in the text.