Deborah J. Rumsey, PhD, is a Professor of Teaching Practice at The Ohio State University. Dr. Rumsey is a Fellow of the American Statistical Association, and the author of several For Dummies titles, including Statistics For Dummies and Statistics Workbook For Dummies.

Introduction 1

Part 1: The Certainty of Uncertainty: Probability Basics 5

Chapter 1: The Probability in Everyday Life 7

Chapter 2: Coming to Terms with Probability 17

Chapter 3: Picturing Probability: Venn Diagrams, Tree Diagrams, and Bayes' Theorem 41

Part 2: Counting on Probability and Betting to Win 67

Chapter 4: Setting the Contingency Table with Probabilities 69

Chapter 5: Applying Counting Rules with Combinations and Permutations 79

Chapter 6: Against All Odds: Probability in Gaming 107

Part 3: From A to Binomial: Basic Probability Models 133

Chapter 7: Probability Distribution Basics 135

Chapter 8: Juggling Success and Failure with the Binomial Distribution 159

Chapter 9: The Normal (but Never Dull) Distribution 177

Chapter 10: Approximating a Binomial with a Normal Distribution 201

Chapter 11: Sampling Distributions and the Central Limit Theorem 213

Chapter 12: Estimating and Doing Hypothesis Tests with Probability 233

Part 4: Taking It Up a Notch: Advanced Probability Models 245

Chapter 13: Working with the Poisson (a Nonpoisonous) Distribution 247

Chapter 14: Covering All the Angles of the Geometric Distribution 263

Chapter 15: Making a Positive out of the Negative Binomial Distribution 273

Chapter 16: Remaining Calm about the Hypergeometric Distribution 287

Part 5: For the Hotshots: Continuous Probability Models 299

Chapter 17: Staying in Line with the Continuous Uniform Distribution 301

Chapter 18: The Exponential (and Its Relationship to Poisson) Exposed 315

Part 6: The Part of Tens 329

Chapter 19: Ten Steps to a Better Probability Grade 331

Chapter 20: Top Ten (or So) Probability Mistakes 341

Appendix: Tables for Reference 351

Index 361