Book excerpt: This text is aimed at students in medicine, biology and the social sciences as well as those planning to specialize in applied statistics. It covers the basics of the design and analysis of surveys and experiments and provides an understanding of the basic principles of modeling and inference. Practical advice is provided on how to design a study, collect data, record observations accurately, detect errors, construct appropriate models, and interpret the results. The text contains many illustrative examples and exercises relating statistical principles to research. A companion web site is available with links to data sets, R codes, and an instructor's manual with teaching hints and solutions.