Minitab Manual, available in StatsPortal in January 2010. Authors: Betsy Greenberg and Mary Parker

For the Basic Practice of Statistics, 5th edition, by David S. Moore and Essential Statistics, by David S. Moore.

In the fall of 2009, various instructors using BPS indicated that they would rather be using a Manual that did match the chapters in the textbook, as had the Greenberg Manual for BPS 4th edition (and earlier editions.) This led to the conclusion that the audience for BPS and the Essentials book needed a different approach than was working for IPS so this additional manual was made available. The more general manual for BPS is still available for those who prefer that style.

I believe this is available in StatsPortal, 5e, now. While it isn't necessary for you to re-create the output for the examples in the Manuals, if you want to do that, here are the datafiles for all chapters of both Manuals.

At this time, neither the Preface nor the Appendix will be available in StatsPortal, since the material there is organized by the chapters, I am providing those here too. Preface BPS | Appendix BPS | Preface ES | Appendix ES |

If you are an instructor who will be using these books in the spring semester, and have questions that I haven't answered below, email Mary Parker.

The examples in these new versions I have prepared do not use data files from the current editions of these books, but instead use datafiles from old editions. I have been told that the zip file of the datafiles will be available on the textbook websites (but not in StatsPortal.) When I see that on their website, I will replace the link above with the link to the Freeman textbook website.

These new versions of the Manual do not include the actual problems from the books as the earlier editions of the Manual did. Instead, for each chapter, there is a list of problems from the book that are appropriate to use software on, and then solutions to those problems, showing how to use Minitab for them, are available to the instructor, through the Instructor Resources in StatsPortal - under Technology Manuals. These are the same set of problems and solutions that were developed for by Pat Humphries for the Michael Evans Minitab Manual that was included in StatsPortal for BPS, 5th edition, beginning in Fall 2009.

I realize it is somewhat confusing to have so many choices, and some not yet visible. Here's a brief summary of my understanding of the discussion/decisions at WH Freeman.

Since there are now numerous versions of Moore's books for different audiences, providing a new version of each type of software manual for each different edition of each different book seemed unnecessary. I believe that, for Introduction to the Practice of Statistics (IPS), students had earlier been happy with a more general manual, like the Evans manual, in which the chapters reflect the types of problems discussed, but don't exactly match the chapters of the textbook. So the company decided to do this for BPS.

In late fall 2009, they asked me if I could adapt Greenberg's Manual for the 4th edition to be appropriate here. After quite a bit of discussion, we agreed upon two changes from the general organization used in Greenberg's Manual for previous editions.

1. While I would organize the Manual to match the chapters of the book, with appropriate examples, I would not use the exact data files from the book but instead use whatever data files were easily available from earlier editions or the current edition. (And we agreed that we would make these datafiles available to the instructors even if it is not possible to make them available within StatsPortal.)
2. I would not include the statements of the exact problems from the book with hints about how to do them, but instead just list the numbers of appropriate problems from the textbook. (These are the same problem numbers listed in the Evans Manual.)

This was what was possible to get done in such a short time-frame in late 2009 and, I believe, will result in a Manual that is almost as useful for students as Greenberg's Manuals have been in the past, but much less work to update for new editions. It is, of course, up to the WH Freeman editors to decide what is best to do for future semesters.

I made a few other changes as well. Here are the large changes.

• Data in groups. Chapter 2 and other chapters. I explained more using datafiles where two-sample data is organized by having a "group variable." Over the last couple of editions of the book, more such datafiles have been included.
• Data on multiple categorical variables. (Two-way tables and Three-way tables.) BPS Chapters 6 and 22. The data files in the 5th edition for problems involving two-way tables are organized differently than in previous editions. I discussed (1) having a row for each observation, (2) having a row for each combination of possible values of the variables, and then the count of all observations with that combination, and then (3) entering a summary table into the worksheet.

Mary Parker, December 2009 mparker@austincc.edu