A statistics teacher wanted to compare two methods of teaching introductory statistics. One method relied heavily on teaching the theory behind statistics (the theory method). The other method consisted of teaching the students various statistical tests and explaining when to use each test (the cookbook method). The teacher found that a leading engineering school was using the theory method in all its introductory statistics classes and that a state teacher’s college was using the cookbook method in all its statistics classes. At the end of each semester the teacher administered a standardized statistics test to both sets of classes. The results indicated that the classes that received the theory method performed far better than did the classes that received the cookbook method. The teacher concluded that the theory method was the superior method and that statistics teachers should adopt it.