The New Stats for Motivation

When we wrote Introduction to the New Statistics, we worked hard to make the book engaging and motivating for students: we used real-world examples, built-in lots of good learning techniques, and even had whimsical cartoons.

Over the past few years, we’ve had some good feedback on these efforts. Today, I (Bob) got some of the best: Several members of the Dominican University softball team have recently completed our stats and methods sequence, and they became such fans of the book that they liberated a promotional poster I had left in the lab. Apparently, the poster is now a coveted motivational talisman for the team. Here is start pitcher Elise Gamino using the New Stats to keep her focused during batting practice:

Elise reports that integrating the New Stats into her training has resulted in a nearly 100% decline in tripping over the mound during games. Nearly.

And recovering softball player Theresa Wilsterman reports “Amazon can expect to never recieve their copy back! “

Theresa also coined a new estimator’s greating, which is better than what we had in the book:

May your experiments always reflect the population’s tendencies

Theresa Wilsterman, Dominican University class of 2023 (probably!)

My guess is with the publication of the 2nd edition, the DU softball team will be a lock for division championships; the dynasty begins.