This book was written with the desire to fill a void in statistics textbooks. It is written for the social science student in general, but the anthropology student in particular. My experience and that of other anthropologists who teach statistics has been that most social science textbooks do not consider the tremendous diversity of interests which concerns anthropologists. The type of examples and exercises used in a textbook are very important, if a student is to be challenged by and interested in learning quantitative methods. While not written to the exclusion of other disciplines in the social sciences, the primary focus of this book is that of anthropology, including as many of its different facets as was possible.

This book is published at a time when the need for a solid quantitative education is becoming more important for anthropologists in all fields of study. Indeed, sophisticated quantitative tests are becoming extremely frequent in the biological anthropology and archaeological journals. The growing importance of statistical education in anthropology was made apparent by a survey of physical anthropologists performed during 1990–1991 (Wienker and Bennett, 1992). The survey asked members of the American Association of Physical Anthropologists to list their most important academic deficiencies. Statistics was ranked as the number 1 deficiency in their training.

The purpose of this book is to educate students on basic univariate tests, not techniques such as multivariate analysis or multiple regression. Once univariate statistics are mastered, students will be in a position to take higher-level statistical classes inside or outside of their own discipline.