Introduction to the New Statistics

Welcome to the ITNS blog, our internet home designed to help students, teachers, and others get the most out of Introduction to the New Statistics. The 2nd edition is now available!

To read a very simple (no formulas, your cat will understand) outline of the book’s main messages:

Go to the publisher’s page for ITNS2 here.
Under the image of the ITNS2 cover a Preview book button will appear. Click this.
Scroll down to see the Contents, Preface, etc… to Chapter 1 Asking and Answering Research Questions. This is p. 1.
Read pp. 1-16 for a very brief summary of how statistics should now be taught and used, and how research should be carried out in this age of Open Science.

You can buy the book or ebook on Amazon here. At that site you can also read the first sections of the book, including Chapter 1.

What will you find on this site?

Newest versions of esci, our free software and tools that emphasise estimation statistics with confidence intervals
- All the simulations previously part of esci (like dance of the means) now run directly in your browser: https://esci.thenewstatistics.com/
- For data analysis, esci is now a module in jamovi, a module in JASP, and a package for R. See the esci menu above.
- You can also still download the older Excel versions of ESCI, though these are no longer being maintained. A listing of all previous Excel versions with download links is here: https://thenewstatistics.com/itns/esci/
Blog posts from Geoff and Bob with news and any updates about ITNS and esci, and musings and news about the New Statistics, Open Science, and Metascience
Information about the first book, Understanding the New Statistics

Looking for the data sets used in examples and exercises in ITNS2? These are now available within esci. See here.

Looking for other goodies? See the Resources for Students and Teachers menu above. We are progressively adding to what’s available there.

Some instructor resources (currently Figure Slides, Quizzes and Answer Keys, PowerPoints, Reading Guides) are on the publisher’s companion website for the book, which currently requires these steps:

Login at this site. To register, you need to contact your local Routledge sales rep.
Click ‘Routledge Titles’, then ‘I’.
Rather than scrolling way down, type Control-F then ‘Introduction to the new’ to search.
Locate the second edition of ITNS and see several zip files for download.

Find us on Bluesky @thenewstats.bsky.social

Teaching Statistics Using Web Applets–Including esci - Recognise the image? Not many handbooks sport a big colour picture from esci on its cover 🙂 Joe Rodgers gives us a super-useful new resource. Chapter 1 (follow the steps in the figure caption) is a wonderful reflection on lessons from his lifetime of teaching statistics, then a brief summary… … Continue reading "Teaching Statistics Using Web Applets–Including esci"
Psychologists Help Society in so Many Ways - Portrait of Ron Cumming, aeronautical engineer, psychologist, pioneer (with Ross Day) of human factors in Australia Ten Years Applying Psychological Science Inside the U.K. Government is fascinating. It prompted this post and is at 6. below, but first a back story. TL;DR. Main points: Ron Cumming, my father, pioneered human… … Continue reading "Psychologists Help Society in so Many Ways"
Brunch With Petra at the Museum - Petra Vaiglova is now Senior Lecturer in Archaeological Science at the Australian National University in Canberra. I posted here about meeting her for the first time, when she visited The University of Melbourne a few years back. Geoff, Petra, and Stephen. Behind is a very early model Holden, manufactured in… … Continue reading "Brunch With Petra at the Museum"
Simine Vazire Drops In for Dinner! - Of course I had to wear my APS uniform. You can just see, over Simine's shoulder, the stunning artwork, portions of which appear on the cover of all my books. It was great to see Simine last night, and to hear about the latest from APS and the world of… … Continue reading "Simine Vazire Drops In for Dinner!"
Research Priorities in Climate and Health Research - The best research method--of course--but also philosophy, ethics, global heating and health: What more could we want? This article, below, discusses all that and more. And, by the way, the lead author happens to be my son, Toby Cumming. Here's the abstract: Toby Cumming Rapid global warming is triggering a… … Continue reading "Research Priorities in Climate and Health Research"
Beyond the p Value: Reform Spreads Across the World and Across Disciplines - ...as evidenced by this article from Brazil, which I'm delighted to see: The article's header I salute Karen Grimmer, JECP co-editor, for publishing it, and for managing to make it Open Access. Karen happens to be a long-standing friend of mine who now continues the good work in 'retirement'. I… … Continue reading "Beyond the p Value: Reform Spreads Across the World and Across Disciplines"
Thankyou Jiangang! A Ten-Year Journey to Significance Roulette - Jiangang Xia is an enterprising professor at the University of Nebraska who, among many other things, teaches into China. He alerted me some years ago to the difficulty his students in China had accessing my videos because YouTube was blocked for them. So I mounted the videos at this OSF… … Continue reading "Thankyou Jiangang! A Ten-Year Journey to Significance Roulette"
A Statistics Textbook for the AI Era - Miodrag Lovrić Miodrag Lovrić is an enormously energetic statistician and educator. He persuaded 700 scholars from 110 countries to contribute to the massive four-volume second edition of the International Encyclopedia of Statistical Science (Springer, 2025). Now he is close to completing Statistical Thinking for the AI Era, which comprises Vol.… … Continue reading "A Statistics Textbook for the AI Era"
The International Research Integrity Conference - Simon Gandevia, a giant in the research integrity community, assembled an international A-list of incredible speakers--plus me--for this Conference (IRIC) recently in Sydney. Diversity of disciplines, but a common focus There were more than 100 registrants, so the presentation room was usually packed. A striking feature was our enormous diversity… … Continue reading "The International Research Integrity Conference"
Running Away From Significance As Hard As It Can? - How many times have you read that p = .062 is "approaching" significance? How do you know it's not sprinting as hard as it can away from statistical significance? (Not my idea, unfortch, but a quote from some insightful person way back.) I've just rediscovered the wonderful list of something… … Continue reading "Running Away From Significance As Hard As It Can?"
The p Value Casino Is Open–For Significance Roulette! - Bradley Dean Excel 2003, the best version ever, was enshittified by MicroSoft in the 2007 version, which was way slower and dropped many wonderful animation facilities :-(. Even vast efforts would not get my great Significance Roulette simulation running in the new version. Two videos use my Excel 2003 version… … Continue reading "The p Value Casino Is Open–For Significance Roulette!"
John Self, AI Pioneer, Chats With ChatGPT - A Chat with ChatGPT by a veteran AI researcher John Self entered the field of AI in the early 1970s. He's a distinguished scholar who can claim to have introduced the idea of user model in his 1974 article (while visiting The University of Melbourne). He was writing in the… … Continue reading "John Self, AI Pioneer, Chats With ChatGPT"
“The New Statistics” by INXS: Why Not?! - Thanks to Prof Dena A. Pastor, of James Madison University for this suggestion. Whenever you hear the hit New Sensation, by Australian rock band INXS, replace "A new sensation" with "The New Statistics". This works for me (of course it would), even if the '80s are a bit recent for… … Continue reading "“The New Statistics” by INXS: Why Not?!"
A Significant Addition to My Wardrobe? - Or is it really? … Continue reading "A Significant Addition to My Wardrobe?"
What We’ll Never Know - Message just in from James Pennebaker, President of the APS, about a sadly highly important project by Tim Wilson. Tim is collecting a bunch of short punchy videos on the theme of 'what we'll never know'--because Trump has just cancelled our research funding. The first four are already up at… … Continue reading "What We’ll Never Know"
Vale Michael Kubovy (1940-2025), Professor of Patterns - I don't think I ever met Michael, but have long known his Gestalt perception work. I now discover he did so much more, especially as a pioneer in data analysis. He and I would have agreed on many, many things. This post is courtesy Alex Holcombe, who wrote: A tribute… … Continue reading "Vale Michael Kubovy (1940-2025), Professor of Patterns"
Open Science: Free Zoom With the Experts Next Week - Definitely worth joining on 18 December, even if for me it's at 6.30am. Note the first three speakers also kindly gave generous endorsements of ITNS2, at the start of the book. OS leaders, for sure. Info and registration here. The announcement: In 2025, SIPS will hold its 10th annual meeting! In celebration… … Continue reading "Open Science: Free Zoom With the Experts Next Week"
Vale Mac (Malcolm Macmillan): Psychologist, Historian, and True Scholar - A memorable gathering at Melbourne University recently celebrated the remarkable life and contributions of Malcolm Bruce Macmillan (Mac) (1 Jan 1929—11 Aug 2024). Mac was one of the Monash University intro teachers in 1966 who helped me discover psychology as an absorbing science. I happily switched from physics and have… … Continue reading "Vale Mac (Malcolm Macmillan): Psychologist, Historian, and True Scholar"
The Spooky Men: A Last-Minute Meditation/Entreaty From Down Under - Watch The Spooky Men's Chorale (3 min) here. (First uploaded four years ago.) We have followed The Spooky Men for years, with their wondrous a capella harmonies and moving lyrics. They have just sent this message: dear worldwe are the spooky menyou know that we are sillyyou know that we… … Continue reading "The Spooky Men: A Last-Minute Meditation/Entreaty From Down Under"
Stop Fooling Yourself – paper by Richard Born - eNeuro has a great new paper by Richard Born (Harvard) about how to diagnose and avoid confirmation bias (Born 2024). The full text is here: https://www.eneuro.org/content/11/10/ENEURO.0415-24.2024 This paper is part of a series on Improving Your Neuroscience that I (R.C-J.) am helping to organize (Calin-Jageman 2024). You can find a… … Continue reading "Stop Fooling Yourself – paper by Richard Born"