He has served as a director and chairman of the education committee of the statistical society of canada and is co author of a popular textbook introduction to probability and statistics his area of expertise includes statistical inference asymptotic theory along with statistical education and consulting. This course provides an elementary introduction to probability and statistics with applications topics include basic combinatorics random variables probability distributions bayesian inference hypothesis testing confidence intervals and linear regression. Probability is starting with an animal and figuring out what footprints it will make statistics is seeing a footprint and guessing the animal probability is straightforward you have the bear measure the foot size the leg length and you can deduce the footprints. Mas131 introduction to probability and statistics semester 1 introduction to probability lecturer dr d j wilkinson statistics is concerned with making inferences about the way the world is based upon things we observe happening nature is complex so the things we see hardly ever conform exactly to simple or elegant mathematical idealisations the world is full of unpredictability