An Adventure in Statistics: The Reality Enigma

An Adventure in Statistics: The Reality Enigma is designed to be an introduction to statistics and does not require anything beyond basic algebra. This 17-chapter text covers the main topics of any introductory statistics course, and even goes beyond to topics such as factorial designs that could be saved for a second course in statistics. This book comes complete with a website that contains learning and teaching materials for students and instructors. It also is complete with R scripts and data files throughout the book. The above description sounds like any other traditional introductory statistics text on the market, and that is where the similarities start to diverge. The first thing that catches a reader’s eye about this text is the colorful comic-book type cover, which depicts amonster abducting awomanwith aman and a cat chasing after (the illustrations throughout the text are done by James Iles). The next major difference is that this text comes complete with a Prologue, Epilogue, and zombies. Professor Field has taken a traditional statistics text and paired it with a graphic novel. This unique approach of following a fictional storyline is designed to provide context for readers on the statistical topics and to help combat the attitude of a student who believes that statistics is boring or struggles to see its applications. The storyline puts decision making using quantitative methods at the center of the book. However, there is a downside to this approach if the book were to be adopted as a text for a course. In using other texts, instructors have the ability to adapt the material to follow their course design. Due to the statistical concepts being woven into a specific storyline inReality Enigma, the instructor would have to follow the book exactly during the teaching of the course, or face a possible struggle. Professor Field admits this is a possibility in the “Can I Dip Into The Book” front matter. The storyline centers around a world after a societal collapse. The collapse started with the development of the reality prism, which was a wearable technology that took subjective views out of all thought and allowed for facts only. This led to the downfall of society, and as society rebuilt, factions became evident. One faction desired to rebuild with all technology available, and the other believed in returning to simpler times. Then came the development ofWiFi-enabled chips that were inserted into individuals (think of this as a person cloud) to store all experiences, which created other factions in society. At this point, we meet the main character Zach Slade, member of the band The Reality Enigma and the most creative musician in the city of Elpis, and his love interest Dr. AliceNightingale, a geneticist. The book starts right before Alice leaves Zach, as their thoughts on society and technology diverge. We learn about a technology called the head, a personal research assistant and reality checker that compiles relevant data and gives a consensus answer to the best of its ability. By the beginning of Chapter 2, Alice has left Zach and wiped all trace of her that can be found through technology, and we are introduced toMilton the talking cat (it makes sense in the storyline). The rest of the story is about Zach’s search for Alice, and statistics is a key to helping him on this quest. As I do not want to ruin the story, that is where I will leave it, but there are some strengths and weaknesses based on the pedagogy of this text and the storyline is key to each. Professor Field uses the storyline to motivate the scientific method, research methods, and then in Chapter 2 moves into communication,mathematical notation, andmeasurement. Chapter 3 discusses summarizing data, using tables and histograms. This iswhere the use of the fictional storyline integrates with the statistics curriculum very nicely. The technology available to the characters—such as the memorybank (think of it as a character’s personal cloud), or the head, or even Milton the cat—is used to stress critical points. This is where an instructor could find difficulty just dipping into the text, because if you are not sure of what is happening, the examples and the applications would be difficult to follow. If you do read the story front to back, you begin to see how the examples clearly integrate, and the use of technology and questions finds some parallel to today’s world. Chapter 4 discusses the foundations of statistical models, measures of central tendency and variation. Chapter 5 discusses the presentation of data with different type of graphs and charts, while Chapter 6 introduces z-scores. Chapter 7, titled Probability: The Bridge of Death, introduces the concepts of probability based on a decision-making storyline. Any instructor has probably had students who find the title of Chapter 7 fitting. The text continues with statistical inference, starting with Chapter 8, which covers sampling distributions, the central limit theorem, and confidence intervals. Chapter 9 could be considered a unique element of this text for an introductory course, and covers the critical topics of robust estimation, bias, M-estimators, and bootstrapping. Chapter 10 introduces hypothesis testing, while Chapter 11 expands the discussion with traditional testing and Bayesian approaches. Chapter 12 begins a section building to traditional linear models, by discussing assumptions, placing emphasis on topics such as multicollinearity and variable types. Chapter 13 begins investigating categorical relationships and estimating correlation. Chapter 14 introduces the general linear model, in simple and multiple linear regression, and even introduces robust regression. From there the text begins to discuss applications of the linear models, and introduces the comparison between two means in Chapter 15 and between several means in Chapter 16. Both linear model and traditional approaches are presented, and repeated measures are also discussed. The text finishes with Chapter 17 on factorial designs. Each of the chapters ends with a set of important definitions from that chapter and questions to check understanding, called Jig:saw puzzles; again the name is tied to the story. Throughout the book there are also useful reminders of important concepts, and references to sections to revisit for review, which could have positive impact on student learning. The publisher, Sage, has added additional material for Reality Enigma that is detailed in