Book excerpt: The Manga Guide to Statistics capitalizes on the international manga phenomenon. This first in a series of EduManga titles from No Starch Press (co-published with Ohmsha, Ltd. of Japan), The Manga Guide to Statistics uses manga to introduce the reader to the world of statistics. Rather than learning from a dry textbook, readers follow the animated adventures of Rui and her teacher, Mamoru Yamamoto, as Rui interacts with a colorful cast of characters. The book consists of seven chapters, each containing a cartoon, text to supplement the cartoon, an exercise and answer section, and a summary. Readers learn about working with numerical and categorical data; probability; relationships between two variables; tests of independence; even how to perform calculations in Microsoft Excel. Other titles in the series will cover topics like databases, electricity, and physics.