Statistical thinking is essential to understanding the nature of scientific results as a consumer. Statistical thinking also facilitates thinking like a scientist. Instead of emphasizing a "correct" procedure for data analysis and its outcome, statistical thinking focuses on the process of data analysis. This article reviews frequentist…

This paper investigates the classification of shapes into broad natural categories such as "animal" or "leaf". We asked whether such coarse classifications can be achieved by a simple statistical classification of the shape skeleton. We surveyed databases of natural shapes, extracting shape skeletons and tabulating their…