Introduction

It might not seem natural to ask questions to answer a question, but we do this without realizing it. Questions like “Do you use the bus to get to work?” will make us wonder whether the person asking means “always use the bus?” or “sometimes use the bus?” or “for both of my work places?”. Even very simple questions such as “Is the light in the room on?” can have us asking if this means “all lights in the room?” or at least one light source?”. So, in our minds, we often are asking questions when we are confronted by a question.

In the world around us, most questions are much more complex and difficult to answer than “Is the light in the room on?”. We can’t even begin to give a question like “How do we fix climate change?” a simple answer. We need to ask simpler questions like “What’s causing climate change?” and “What is the main cause of climate change?” and “How do we go about making the necessary changes?”. Even these simpler questions require yet simpler questions in order to resolve them.

Once we have questions that we can readily answer, we can use those answers to help answer the bigger questions. Precise questions lead to meaningful answers, and the right questions lead to useful solutions. In short, answers are only as good as the questions we ask. This is the approach we will take with this introductory course to statistics.