A course in introductory biostatistics is often required for professional students in public health, dentistry, nursing, and medicine, and for graduate students in nursing and other biomedical sciences, a requirement that is often considered a roadblock, causing anxiety in many quarters. These feelings are expressed in many ways and in many di¤erent settings, but all lead to the same conclusion: that students need help, in the form of a user-friendly and real data-based text, in order to provide enough motivation to learn a subject that is perceived to be and dry. This introductory text is written for professionals and beginning graduate students in human health disciplines who need help to pass and benefit from the basic biostatistics requirement of a one-term course or a fullyear sequence of two courses. Our main objective is to avoid the perception that statistics is just a series of formulas that students need to ‘‘get over with,’’ but to present it as a way of thinking—thinking about ways to gather and analyze data so as to benefit from taking the required course. There is no better way to do that than to base a book on real data, so many real data sets in various fields are provided in the form of examples and exercises as aids to learning how to use statistical procedures, still the nuts and bolts of elementary applied statistics.