“Using real stories with quantitative reasoning skills enmeshed in the story line is a powerful and logical way to teach biology and show its relevance to the lives of future citizens, regardless of whether they are science specialists or laypeople.”
—from the introduction to Science Stories You Can Count On

This book can make you a marvel of classroom multitasking. First, it helps you achieve a serious goal: to blend 12 areas of general biology with quantitative reasoning in ways that will make your students better at evaluating product claims and news reports. Second, its 51 case studies are a great way to get students engaged in science. Who wouldn’t be glad to skip the lecture and instead delve into investigating cases with titles like these:

• “A Can of Bull? Do Energy Drinks Really Provide a Source of Energy?”
• “ELVIS Meltdown! Microbiology Concepts of Culture, Growth, and Metabolism”
• “The Case of the Druid Dracula”
• “As the Worm Turns: Speciation and the Maggot Fly”
• “The Dead Zone: Ecology and Oceanography in the Gulf of Mexico”

Long-time pioneers in the use of educational case studies, the authors have written two other popular NSTA Press books: Start With a Story (2007) and Science Stories: Using Case Studies to Teach Critical Thinking (2012). Science Stories You Can Count On is easy to use with both biology majors and nonscience students. The cases are clearly written and provide detailed teaching notes and answer keys on a coordinating website. You can count on this book to help you promote scientific and data literacy in ways to prepare students to reason quantitatively and, as the authors write, “to be astute enough to demand to see the evidence.”