This book helps readers understand the approaches used by statisticians as they strive to make intelligent and accurate statements about a population from a limited sample, seek to reduce the risk of being seriously mislead about important on-the-job decisions, and try to make data driven decisions that will ultimately lead to stronger predictions for product performance.

The practical approached championed in this book have led to increasing the quality on many successful products through providing a better understanding of consumer needs, current product and process performance and a desired future state. In 2009, Frank Rossi and Viktor Mirtchev brought their practical statistical thinking forward and created the course “Statistics for Food Scientists”. The intent of the course was to help product and process developers increase the probability of their project’s success through the incorporation of practical statistical thinking in their challenges. The course has since grown and has become the basis of this book.