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I have been teaching introductory statistics to undergraduate economics and business students for almost 30 years. When I took the course as an undergraduate, before computers were widely available to students, we had lots of homework, and learned how to do the arithmetic needed to get the mathematical answer. When I got to graduate school, I found out that I did not have any idea of how statistics worked, or what test to use in what situation. The first few times I taught the course, I stressed learning what test to use in what situation and what the arithmetic answer meant. As computers became more and more available, students would do statistical studies that would have taken months to perform before, and it became even more important that students understand some of the basic ideas behind statistics, especially the sampling distribution, so I shifted my courses toward an intuitive understanding of sampling distributions and their place in hypothesis testing. That is what is presented here—my attempt to help students understand how statistics works, not just how to “get the right number”.

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