Sources and Workflow

Significant Statistics: An Introduction to Statistics is adapted by John Morgan Russell from open textbooks from OpenStax and OpenIntro. These source books are released under open licenses which allow reuse and remix at no cost with attribution. Additional topics, examples, and innovations in terminology and practical applications have been added, all with a goal of increasing relevance and accessibility for students.

Content for this book was gathered and adapted from multiple openly-licensed sources including:

• OpenStax Introductory Statistics by Barbara Illowsky and Susan Dean, which is licensed with a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 (CC BY 4.0) license,
• OpenIntro Statistics by David Diez, Mine C¸ etinkaya-Rundel, and Christopher D Barr which is licensed with a Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike 3.0 (CC BY SA 3.0) license, and
• Introductory Statistics for the Life and Biomedical Sciences by Julie Vu and David Harrington which is licensed with a Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike 3.0 (CC BY SA 3.0) license

The base of the book is from OpenStax, much of which was reworded and reorganized. The main reorganizations were streamlining the probability chapter (CH3), removing ancillary discrete (CH4) and continuous (CH5) distribution sections, introducing the normal distribution (5.3) in the continuous distributions chapter and removing the Chi-Square and ANOVA Chapters.

Additional content from the OpenIntro texts was then added to fill in gaps. This included adding more detailed information on data collection (1.3 &1.4), Normal approximation (5.3), and inferential techniques applied to proportions (7.3-7.5, 8.3). Several figures were also adapted from the OpenIntro texts.

About the Adapter

John Morgan Russell teaches various introductory statistics courses at Virginia Tech, and previously taught at George Mason University and Old Dominion University. He earned a BS in Mathematics from Christopher Newport University, an MS in Statistical Science from George Mason University, and an Ed.S. in Instructional design and Technology from Virginia Tech. His interests include statistics education, instructional design, and open educational resources.

About the Editorial Team

Editorial support was provided for this project by Managing Editor, Anita Walz and Graphic Design Specialist, Kindred Grey.

Kindred Grey is a recent graduate of Virginia Tech with majors in Statistics and Psychology. Apart from her studies, she enjoys graphic design and color theory. Her contributions to this textbook include review and identification of elements that would make the book more relevant and accessible to today’s students: development of the color scheme, original graphics, and selection of images to form a more cohesive and lucid textbook, and authoring of alt-text to enable equivalent access to graphics by readers who rely on screen reader software.

Anita Walz is Associate Professor, and Assistant Director of Open Education and Scholarly Communication Librarian in the University Libraries at Virginia Tech. She received her MS in Library and Information Science from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and has worked in university, government, school, and international libraries for eighteen years. She is the founder of the Open Education Initiative at Virginia Tech and the managing editor of several open textbooks adapted or created at Virginia Tech, many of which may be found here: https://vtechworks.lib.vt.edu/handle/10919/70959. She provided overall planning, project coordination, day-to-day supervision, and oversight.

Project Funding

Development of this book was made possible in part through a grant from the University Libraries at Virginia Tech’s Open Education Initiative.