Acknowledgements

This textbook represents a labour of love and a deep commitment to my students.

I would like to first thank Deborah King, Alice Luetchford and Sharon Bryan from the James Cook University Library. I came to them with an idea for a book that would incorporate the way that I see and understand statistics. They have been very supportive from the beginning. Thank you Deb for assisting with the formatting and proofreading and for being ever so patient with the whole process. However, any remaining errors are my responsibility alone. Thank you Alice for overseeing the project. I’m sure there are many behind-the-scenes tasks that I am not aware of that are involved in developing this book.

I would also like to express my gratitude to Russell Poldrack, Daniel Navarro, and Dustin Fife. My book is based largely on their existing open education resources.

I am also grateful to the Council of Australian University Librarians (CAUL) for supporting the creation of this Open Education Resource.

This book is dedicated to Michelle, who took four years of research methods and statistics in her psychology degree, and received distinctions and high distinctions in these subjects but admitted that she did not learn anything. She only knew how to click the right buttons in SPSS. I also dedicate this book to my niece and nephews, and I hope that they will develop the same interest and curiosity towards numbers and research.