The book is a guide to the practical application of statistics in data analysis as typically encountered in the physical sciences. It is addressed at graduate and advanced undergraduate students as well as researchers who need to draw quantitative conclusions from experimental data. Although most of the examples are taken from particle physics, the material is presented in a sufficiently general way as to be useful to people from most branches of physics and astronomy.

The first part of the book describes the basic tools of data analysis: concepts of probability and random variables, Monte Carlo techniques, statistical tests, and methods of parameter estimation. The last three chapters cover interval estimation (with special attention to problems encountered in particle physics), characteristic functions, and the problem of correcting distributions for the effects of measurement errors (unfolding).

On this page you can find:

• The book's table of contents.

• A continuously evolving collection of exercises.

• Some computer routines (in FORTRAN) for use with the exercises.

• A link to the CERN program library.

• Statistics and data analysis links.

• An exercise in image reconstruction.