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Think Stats Exploratory Data Analysis Second Edition
Allen B. Downey Digital Instant Download
Author(s): Allen B. Downey
ISBN(s): 9781491907375, 1491907371
Edition: Second edition
File Details: PDF, 10.84 MB
Year: 2015
Language: english
 2n
d
Ed
Think
Think Stats

iti
on
SECOND
EDITION
If you know how to program, you have the skills to turn data into knowledge
using tools of probability and statistics. This concise introduction shows comprehensive
“This is the most 
introduc-

Think Stats
you how to perform statistical analysis computationally, rather than
mathematically, with programs written in Python. tion to the Python data
By working with a single case study throughout this thoroughly revised
analysis stack on the
book, you’ll learn the entire process of exploratory data analysis—from market. Practitioners

Stats
collecting data and generating statistics to identifying patterns and testing who want to brush up 
hypotheses. You’ll explore distributions, rules of probability, visualization, on their technical skills
and many other tools and concepts.
by learning about the
New chapters on regression, time series analysis, survival analysis, and
analytic methods will enrich your discoveries.
tools available for a 
modern programming
■■ Develop an understanding of probability and statistics by language will also 
writing and testing code benefit from this book.
■■ Run experiments to test statistical behavior, such as generating This is an excellent 
samples from several distributions
modern statistics 
■■ Use simulations to understand concepts that are hard to grasp
mathematically textbook. ” —Skipper Seabold
EXPLOR ATORY
■■ Import data from most sources with Python, rather than rely author of StatsModels
DATA ANALYSIS
on data that’s cleaned and formatted for statistics tools
■■ Use statistical inference to answer questions about real-world
data

Allen Downey is a Professor of Computer Science at Olin College of Engineering.

He has taught computer science at Wellesley College, Colby College, and UC
Berkeley. He earned a PhD in Computer Science from UC Berkeley, and master’s
and bachelor’s degrees from MIT.

Downey

STATISTICS PROGR AMMING

Twitter: @oreillymedia
facebook.com/oreilly
US $34.99 CAN $36.99
ISBN: 978-1-491-90733-7

Allen B. Downey
 2n
d
Ed
Think
Think Stats

iti
on
SECOND
EDITION
If you know how to program, you have the skills to turn data into knowledge
using tools of probability and statistics. This concise introduction shows comprehensive
“This is the most 
introduc-

Think Stats
you how to perform statistical analysis computationally, rather than
mathematically, with programs written in Python. tion to the Python data
By working with a single case study throughout this thoroughly revised
analysis stack on the
book, you’ll learn the entire process of exploratory data analysis—from market. Practitioners

Stats
collecting data and generating statistics to identifying patterns and testing who want to brush up 
hypotheses. You’ll explore distributions, rules of probability, visualization, on their technical skills
and many other tools and concepts.
by learning about the
New chapters on regression, time series analysis, survival analysis, and
analytic methods will enrich your discoveries.
tools available for a 
modern programming
■■ Develop an understanding of probability and statistics by language will also 
writing and testing code benefit from this book.
■■ Run experiments to test statistical behavior, such as generating This is an excellent 
samples from several distributions
modern statistics 
■■ Use simulations to understand concepts that are hard to grasp
mathematically textbook. ” —Skipper Seabold
EXPLOR ATORY
■■ Import data from most sources with Python, rather than rely author of StatsModels
DATA ANALYSIS
on data that’s cleaned and formatted for statistics tools
■■ Use statistical inference to answer questions about real-world
data

Allen Downey is a Professor of Computer Science at Olin College of Engineering.

He has taught computer science at Wellesley College, Colby College, and UC
Berkeley. He earned a PhD in Computer Science from UC Berkeley, and master’s
and bachelor’s degrees from MIT.

Downey

STATISTICS PROGR AMMING

Twitter: @oreillymedia
facebook.com/oreilly
US $34.99 CAN $36.99
ISBN: 978-1-491-90733-7

Allen B. Downey
 SECOND EDITION

Think Stats

Allen B. Downey
Think Stats, Second Edition
by Allen B. Downey
Copyright © 2015 Allen B. Downey. All rights reserved.
Printed in the United States of America.
Published by O’Reilly Media, Inc., 1005 Gravenstein Highway North, Sebastopol, CA 95472.
O’Reilly books may be purchased for educational, business, or sales promotional use. Online editions are
also available for most titles (http://safaribooksonline.com). For more information, contact our corporate/
institutional sales department: 800-998-9938 or [email protected].
Editors: Mike Loukides and Meghan Blanchette Indexer: Allen B. Downey
Production Editor: Melanie Yarbrough Cover Designer: Karen Montgomery
Copyeditor: Marta Justak Interior Designer: David Futato
Proofreader: Amanda Kersey Illustrator: Rebecca Demarest

October 2014: Second Edition

Revision History for the Second Edition:

2014-10-09: First release

See http://oreilly.com/catalog/errata.csp?isbn=9781491907337 for release details.

The O’Reilly logo is a registered trademarks of O’Reilly Media, Inc. Think Stats, second edition, the cover
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While the publisher and the author have used good faith efforts to ensure that the information and instruc‐
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samples or other technology this work contains or describes is subject to open source licenses or the intel‐
lectual property rights of others, it is your responsibility to ensure that your use thereof complies with such
licenses and/or rights.
Think Stats is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported
License. The author maintains an online version at http://thinkstats2.com.

ISBN: 978-1-491-90733-7
[LSI]
 Table of Contents

Preface. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ix

1. Exploratory Data Analysis. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

A Statistical Approach 2
The National Survey of Family Growth 2
Importing the Data 3
DataFrames 4
Variables 6
Transformation 7
Validation 8
Interpretation 9
Exercises 11
Glossary 12

2. Distributions. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
Representing Histograms 16
Plotting Histograms 16
NSFG Variables 17
Outliers 19
First Babies 20
Summarizing Distributions 22
Variance 23
Effect Size 23
Reporting Results 24
Exercises 25
Glossary 25

3. Probability Mass Functions. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27

Pmfs 27

iii
 Plotting PMFs 28
Other Visualizations 30
The Class Size Paradox 30
DataFrame Indexing 34
Exercises 35
Glossary 37

4. Cumulative Distribution Functions. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39

The Limits of PMFs 39
Percentiles 40
CDFs 41
Representing CDFs 42
Comparing CDFs 44
Percentile-Based Statistics 44
Random Numbers 45
Comparing Percentile Ranks 47
Exercises 47
Glossary 48

5. Modeling Distributions. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49
The Exponential Distribution 49
The Normal Distribution 52
Normal Probability Plot 54
The lognormal Distribution 55
The Pareto Distribution 57
Generating Random Numbers 60
Why Model? 61
Exercises 61
Glossary 63

6. Probability Density Functions. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65

PDFs 65
Kernel Density Estimation 67
The Distribution Framework 69
Hist Implementation 69
Pmf Implementation 70
Cdf Implementation 71
Moments 72
Skewness 73
Exercises 75
Glossary 77

iv | Table of Contents
 7. Relationships Between Variables. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79
Scatter Plots 79
Characterizing Relationships 82
Correlation 83
Covariance 84
Pearson’s Correlation 85
Nonlinear Relationships 86
Spearman’s Rank Correlation 87
Correlation and Causation 88
Exercises 88
Glossary 89

8. Estimation. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91
The Estimation Game 91
Guess the Variance 93
Sampling Distributions 94
Sampling Bias 97
Exponential Distributions 98
Exercises 99
Glossary 100

9. Hypothesis Testing. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101

Classical Hypothesis Testing 101
HypothesisTest 102
Testing a Difference in Means 104
Other Test Statistics 105
Testing a Correlation 107
Testing Proportions 108
Chi-Squared Tests 109
First Babies Again 110
Errors 111
Power 112
Replication 113
Exercises 114
Glossary 114

10. Linear Least Squares. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117

Least Squares Fit 117
Implementation 118
Residuals 119
Estimation 120
Goodness of Fit 122

Table of Contents | v
 Testing a Linear Model 124
Weighted Resampling 126
Exercises 127
Glossary 128

11. Regression. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129

StatsModels 130
Multiple Regression 131
Nonlinear Relationships 133
Data Mining 134
Prediction 135
Logistic Regression 137
Estimating Parameters 139
Implementation 140
Accuracy 141
Exercises 142
Glossary 143

12. Time Series Analysis. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 145

Importing and Cleaning 145
Plotting 147
Linear Regression 148
Moving Averages 151
Missing Values 153
Serial Correlation 153
Autocorrelation 155
Prediction 157
Further Reading 161
Exercises 161
Glossary 162

13. Survival Analysis. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 165

Survival Curves 165
Hazard Function 167
Estimating Survival Curves 168
Kaplan-Meier Estimation 169
The Marriage Curve 170
Estimating the Survival Function 171
Confidence Intervals 172
Cohort Effects 173
Extrapolation 176
Expected Remaining Lifetime 178

vi | Table of Contents
 Exercises 180
Glossary 181

14. Analytic Methods. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 183

Normal Distributions 183
Sampling Distributions 184
Representing Normal Distributions 185
Central Limit Theorem 186
Testing the CLT 187
Applying the CLT 190
Correlation Test 191
Chi-Squared Test 193
Discussion 194
Exercises 195

Index. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 197

Table of Contents | vii

 Preface

This book is an introduction to the practical tools of exploratory data analysis. The
organization of the book follows the process I use when I start working with a dataset:

• Importing and cleaning: Whatever format the data is in, it usually takes some time
and effort to read the data, clean and transform it, and check that everything made
it through the translation process intact.
• Single variable explorations: I usually start by examining one variable at a time,
finding out what the variables mean, looking at distributions of the values, and
choosing appropriate summary statistics.
• Pair-wise explorations: To identify possible relationships between variables, I look
at tables and scatter plots, and compute correlations and linear fits.
• Multivariate analysis: If there are apparent relationships between variables, I use
multiple regression to add control variables and investigate more complex rela‐
tionships.
• Estimation and hypothesis testing: When reporting statistical results, it is important
to answer three questions: How big is the effect? How much variability should we
expect if we run the same measurement again? Is it possible that the apparent effect
is due to chance?
• Visualization: During exploration, visualization is an important tool for finding
possible relationships and effects. Then if an apparent effect holds up to scrutiny,
visualization is an effective way to communicate results.

This book takes a computational approach, which has several advantages over mathe‐
matical approaches:

• I present most ideas using Python code, rather than mathematical notation. In
general, Python code is more readable; also, because it is executable, readers can
download it, run it, and modify it.

ix
 • Each chapter includes exercises readers can do to develop and solidify their learn‐
ing. When you write programs, you express your understanding in code; while you
are debugging the program, you are also correcting your understanding.
• Some exercises involve experiments to test statistical behavior. For example, you
can explore the Central Limit Theorem (CLT) by generating random samples and
computing their sums. The resulting visualizations demonstrate why the CLT works
and when it doesn’t.
• Some ideas that are hard to grasp mathematically are easy to understand by simu‐
lation. For example, we approximate p-values by running random simulations,
which reinforces the meaning of the p-value.
• Because the book is based on a general-purpose programming language (Python),
readers can import data from almost any source. They are not limited to datasets
that have been cleaned and formatted for a particular statistics tool.

The book lends itself to a project-based approach. In my class, students work on a

semester-long project that requires them to pose a statistical question, find a dataset
that can address it, and apply each of the techniques they learn to their own data.
To demonstrate my approach to statistical analysis, the book presents a case study that
runs through all of the chapters. It uses data from two sources:

• The National Survey of Family Growth (NSFG), conducted by the U.S. Centers for
Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to gather “information on family life, mar‐
riage and divorce, pregnancy, infertility, use of contraception, and men’s and wom‐
en’s health.” (See http://cdc.gov/nchs/nsfg.htm.)
• The Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS), conducted by the Na‐
tional Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion to “track
health conditions and risk behaviors in the United States.” (See http://cdc.gov/
BRFSS/.)

Other examples use data from the IRS, the U.S. Census, and the Boston Marathon.
This second edition of Think Stats includes the chapters from the first edition, many of
them substantially revised, and new chapters on regression, time series analysis, survival
analysis, and analytic methods. The previous edition did not use pandas, SciPy, or
StatsModels, so all of that material is new.

How I Wrote This Book

When people write a new textbook, they usually start by reading a stack of old textbooks.
As a result, most books contain the same material in pretty much the same order.

x | Preface
I did not do that. In fact, I used almost no printed material while I was writing this book,
for several reasons:

• My goal was to explore a new approach to this material, so I didn’t want much
exposure to existing approaches.
• Since I am making this book available under a free license, I wanted to make sure
that no part of it was encumbered by copyright restrictions.
• Many readers of my books don’t have access to libraries of printed material, so I
tried to make references to resources that are freely available on the Internet.
• Some proponents of old media think that the exclusive use of electronic resources
is lazy and unreliable. They might be right about the first part, but I think they are
wrong about the second, so I wanted to test my theory.

The resource I used more than any other is Wikipedia. In general, the articles I read on
statistical topics were very good (although I made a few small changes along the way).
I include references to Wikipedia pages throughout the book and I encourage you to
follow those links; in many cases, the Wikipedia page picks up where my description
leaves off. The vocabulary and notation in this book are generally consistent with Wi‐
kipedia, unless I had a good reason to deviate. Other resources I found useful were
Wolfram MathWorld and the Reddit statistics forum.

Using the Code

The code and data used in this book are available from GitHub. Git is a version control
system that allows you to keep track of the files that make up a project. A collection of
files under Git’s control is called a repository. GitHub is a hosting service that provides
storage for Git repositories and a convenient web interface.
The GitHub homepage for my repository provides several ways to work with the code:

• You can create a copy of my repository on GitHub by pressing the Fork button. If
you don’t already have a GitHub account, you’ll need to create one. After forking,
you’ll have your own repository on GitHub that you can use to keep track of code
you write while working on this book. Then you can clone the repo, which means
that you make a copy of the files on your computer.
• Or you could clone my repository. You don’t need a GitHub account to do this, but
you won’t be able to write your changes back to GitHub.
• If you don’t want to use Git at all, you can download the files in a Zip file using the
button in the lower-right corner of the GitHub page.

All of the code is written to work in both Python 2 and Python 3 with no translation.

Preface | xi
I developed this book using Anaconda from Continuum Analytics, which is a free
Python distribution that includes all the packages you’ll need to run the code (and lots
more). I found Anaconda easy to install. By default it does a user-level installation, not
system-level, so you don’t need administrative privileges. And it supports both Python
2 and Python 3. You can download Anaconda from Continuum.
If you don’t want to use Anaconda, you will need the following packages:

• pandas for representing and analyzing data

• NumPy for basic numerical computation
• SciPy for scientific computation including statistics
• StatsModels for regression and other statistical analysis
• matplotlib for visualization

Although these are commonly used packages, they are not included with all Python
installations, and they can be hard to install in some environments. If you have trouble
installing them, I strongly recommend using Anaconda or one of the other Python
distributions that include these packages.
After you clone the repository or unzip the zip file, you should have a file called
ThinkStats2/code/nsfg.py. If you run it, it should read a data file, run some tests, and
print a message like, “All tests passed.” If you get import errors, it probably means there
are packages you need to install.
Most exercises use Python scripts, but some also use the IPython notebook. If you have
not used IPython notebook before, I suggest you start with the documentation.
I wrote this book assuming that the reader is familiar with core Python, including object-
oriented features, but not pandas, NumPy, and SciPy. If you are already familiar with
these modules, you can skip a few sections.
I assume that the reader knows basic mathematics, including logarithms, for example,
and summations. I refer to calculus concepts in a few places, but you don’t have to do
any calculus.
If you have never studied statistics, I think this book is a good place to start. And if you
have taken a traditional statistics class, I hope this book will help repair the damage.
—
Allen B. Downey is a Professor of Computer Science at the Franklin W. Olin College of
Engineering in Needham, MA.

xii | Preface
Contributor List
If you have a suggestion or correction, please send email to downey@allendow‐
ney.com. If I make a change based on your feedback, I will add you to the contributor
list (unless you ask to be omitted).
If you include at least part of the sentence the error appears in, that makes it easy for
me to search. Page and section numbers are fine, too, but not quite as easy to work with.
Thanks!

• Lisa Downey and June Downey read an early draft and made many corrections and
suggestions.
• Steven Zhang found several errors.
• Andy Pethan and Molly Farison helped debug some of the solutions, and Molly
spotted several typos.
• Andrew Heine found an error in my error function.
• Dr. Nikolas Akerblom knows how big a Hyracotherium is.
• Alex Morrow clarified one of the code examples.
• Jonathan Street caught an error in the nick of time.
• Gábor Lipták found a typo in the book and the relay race solution.
• Many thanks to Kevin Smith and Tim Arnold for their work on plasTeX, which I
used to convert this book to DocBook.
• George Caplan sent several suggestions for improving clarity.
• Julian Ceipek found an error and a number of typos.
• Stijn Debrouwere, Leo Marihart III, Jonathan Hammler, and Kent Johnson found
errors in the first print edition.
• Dan Kearney found a typo.
• Jeff Pickhardt found a broken link and a typo.
• Jörg Beyer found typos in the book and made many corrections in the docstrings
of the accompanying code.
• Tommie Gannert sent a patch file with a number of corrections.
• Alexander Gryzlov suggested a clarification in an exercise.
• Martin Veillette reported an error in one of the formulas for Pearson’s correlation.
• Christoph Lendenmann submitted several errata.
• Haitao Ma noticed a typo and and sent me a note.
• Michael Kearney sent me many excellent suggestions.

Preface | xiii
 • Alex Birch made a number of helpful suggestions.
• Lindsey Vanderlyn, Griffin Tschurwald, and Ben Small read an early version of this
book and found many errors.
• John Roth, Carol Willing, and Carol Novitsky performed technical reviews of the
book. They found many errors and made many helpful suggestions.
• Rohit Deshpande found a typesetting error.
• David Palmer sent many helpful suggestions and corrections.
• Erik Kulyk found many typos.

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Preface | xv
 CHAPTER 1
Exploratory Data Analysis

The thesis of this book is that data combined with practical methods can answer ques‐
tions and guide decisions under uncertainty.
As an example, I present a case study motivated by a question I heard when my wife
and I were expecting our first child: do first babies tend to arrive late?
If you Google this question, you will find plenty of discussion. Some people claim it’s
true, others say it’s a myth, and some people say it’s the other way around: first babies
come early.
In many of these discussions, people provide data to support their claims. I found many
examples like these:
“My two friends that have given birth recently to their first babies, BOTH went almost 2
weeks overdue before going into labour or being induced.”
“My first one came 2 weeks late and now I think the second one is going to come out two
weeks early!!”
“I don’t think that can be true because my sister was my mother’s first and she was early,
as with many of my cousins.”
Reports like these are called anecdotal evidence because they are based on data that is
unpublished and usually personal. In casual conversation, there is nothing wrong with
anecdotes, so I don’t mean to pick on the people I quoted.
But we might want evidence that is more persuasive and an answer that is more reliable.
By those standards, anecdotal evidence usually fails, because:
Small number of observations
If pregnancy length is longer for first babies, the difference is probably small com‐
pared to natural variation. In that case, we might have to compare a large number
of pregnancies to be sure that a difference exists.

1
Selection bias
People who join a discussion of this question might be interested because their first
babies were late. In that case the process of selecting data would bias the results.
Confirmation bias
People who believe the claim might be more likely to contribute examples that
confirm it. People who doubt the claim are more likely to cite counterexamples.
Inaccuracy
Anecdotes are often personal stories, and often misremembered, misrepresented,
repeated inaccurately, etc.
So how can we do better?

A Statistical Approach
To address the limitations of anecdotes, we will use the tools of statistics, which include:
Data collection
We will use data from a large national survey that was designed explicitly with the
goal of generating statistically valid inferences about the U.S. population.
Descriptive statistics
We will generate statistics that summarize the data concisely, and evaluate different
ways to visualize data.
Exploratory data analysis
We will look for patterns, differences, and other features that address the questions
we are interested in. At the same time we will check for inconsistencies and identify
limitations.
Estimation
We will use data from a sample to estimate characteristics of the general population.
Hypothesis testing
Where we see apparent effects, like a difference between two groups, we will evaluate
whether the effect might have happened by chance.
By performing these steps with care to avoid pitfalls, we can reach conclusions that are
more justifiable and more likely to be correct.

The National Survey of Family Growth

Since 1973, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) have conducted
the National Survey of Family Growth (NSFG), which is intended to gather “information
on family life, marriage and divorce, pregnancy, infertility, use of contraception, and
men’s and women’s health. The survey results are used…to plan health services and

2 | Chapter 1: Exploratory Data Analysis

Discovering Diverse Content Through
Random Scribd Documents
 167
Hanka’s knees shook with terror and he dropped his
candle on the mosaic floor. The candle went out, yet the
room was full of light, a still, blue light, like the
reflections in a block of ice. The four great men did not
move. But King Winter raised his hand and beckoned to
the lad.

“Come here,” he said quite kindly. Hanka had fallen to

his knees, and crept upon them across the floor, holding
up his hands for mercy.

“Who art thou?” demanded the King.

“Have pity, O most wonderful King! I am only Hanka the

Fool.”

“Have ye come back from the great forests, thou and

thy friends?”
“Sir,” replied Hanka, kissing his feet, “It is only I who
have come. I did not mean to chop through the roof of
the palace. I meant to chop a hole in the ice of the
White Sea to catch some fish, for the Tsar and his
people are starving.”

“Thou hast come alone?” asked King Winter in surprise, 168

“How is it that wolves and bears and all the wild beasts
have spared thee, and robbers have not beaten thee to
death?”

“Because, O Most Wonderful Majesty, I traveled with the

Tsar’s blessing on my head.”

King Winter sat up, and even the four Spirits looked
startled.

“But since when,” asked the King, “doth the proud

Merciless Tsar stoop to give his blessing to such a
beggar-lad as thee?”

“Oh,” cried Hanka, “he is not proud, indeed he isn’t! He

is as humble as I am, even I, Hanka the Fool. We call
him the Merciful Tsar, for he has turned from all his
wickedness, and given his wealth away. I was a
wayfarer, and he had no other gift for me, so he gave
me his blessing, Most Wonderful King!”

At these words King Winter arose, the four spirits lifted 169
their heads, there was a murmur of many voices and
then fairy music everywhere.

“Rise up, Hanka,” said the Ruler of the North. “My reign
in the City is over, for the Merciless Tsar has repented
and become as humble as thou. Go back to the great
forests where thy Tsar and his people are, and tell them
to return hither, for King Winter and his forces have left
the city, and it belongs to the Tsar once more! In token
of this, in case thou shouldst forget what to say, take
that bag of snow-stars behind the Throne, and carry it
to the Tsar.”

170
While he spoke, a whole army of spirits, snow-fairies
and wind-fairies and genie, crowned with frost-flowers,
gathered from all parts of the palace. Some came from
the bedrooms, where they had been asleep in the
bureau-drawers, some from the kitchen where they had
been hiding under cups and mixing-bowls, some peeped
down over the pictures on the parlor wall, or between
the curtains, or even out of the empty hall-stove. They
all joined hands in a ring and danced around Hanka,
who sat bewildered on the floor with his axe and
fishing-rod, wondering where all these creatures had
been while he had explored the palace.
“Joy, joy,” sang the spirits, “we are going home again,
home to the North Pole, to our friends, the seals and
polar bears, the long waiting-time is over, for the
Merciless Tsar has repented—joy, joy, joy!”

Then there was a tinkle of icicles outside the door, as 171

King Winter’s sleigh with the three white horses came
jingling up. The palace doors flew open and Hanka saw
that the snow had already melted down almost to the
turquoise terraces. The king leaped into his chariot,
waved his hand to the humble fool who had followed
him to the door, and away went the royal horses, over
the frozen White Sea to the distant North Pole, with all
the fairy train holding on and running behind as swiftly
as the wind.

Hanka turned back and looked at the empty throne

chamber. The four great Spirits had vanished, though he
had not seen them running away with the fairies. But
where they had stood, the floor was cracked a little, and
four yellow crocus-flowers had sprung up through the
stone.

Hanka felt very lonesome and frightened in the big, 172

splendid palace. He picked up his axe and rod and the
bag of snow-stars King Winter had ordered him to take,
and ran as fast as he could through the open door, over
the terraces, through the town and gates to the open
country outside. Everywhere the snow had gone away
so quickly that the second stories of all the houses were
quite free and the first stories just appearing. Beyond
the gates, he came upon great streams of water that
were running down to the White Sea, where the ice was
melting and wiping out the track of King Winter’s sleigh.
Hanka turned toward the South, to the great forests
where the Tsar’s people had built their wooden village.
He sang aloud as he walked, because the warm sun was
shining on his back, and his stomach was full of
crackers and jam, so he felt very happy despite the
heavy bag of snow-stars on his shoulder. If he had not
been a fool he would certainly have wondered why they
were so heavy; but he was a fool so he just carried
them and did not wonder at anything. Above him in the
treetops the birds were singing as happily as he, the air
smelled sweet and warm, and in some places Mother
Mir’s flowers were peeping through the thin, wet snow.

“Why, I believe it’s going to be Spring!” said Hanka. 173

In the village, the Tsar was still sitting on the bench

beside the gate. The villagers came to offer him food,
but he refused it, saying “You have not enough for
yourselves. I will not eat your food. Give it to your
children, good people!”

“But you will starve!” they cried. “Oh no,” replied the
Tsar. “Some good Saint will take care of me.”

And in the night, when the village was quiet and dark,
the crows in the forest flew to him and brought him
some frozen berries, the squirrels brought nuts to
appease his hunger, and the fairies from the great
Forest brought partridge-eggs and reindeer milk.

174
It was a beautiful sunny morning, when the villagers
who stood about the gate talking to the Tsar saw Hanka
returning, with his axe and rod and a bag over his
shoulder. “Look, look,” they cried, “he is bringing a
whole bagful of fish!”

“But where do you suppose he got the bag?” said the

Tsar. “He didn’t have it when he left.”

They were not kept guessing very long. Hanka came

running and shouting:

“Greetings, O Merciful Tsar, greetings from King Winter! 175

He gave me a message to thee, but I have forgotten it,
but here is a bag of snow-stars for thee, and thy city is
all thawed out, King Winter has gone back to the North
Pole. And I went through thy palace and found lots of
crackers and jam, which I ate. I didn’t mean to steal,
but there was nobody to ask for them so I had to take
them.”

The Tsar smiled and nodded.

“Thou art welcome to my crackers and jam, dear

Hanka,” he said, as he opened the bag of snow-stars,
took it by the lower corners, and turned it upside down.

Out of the bag rolled thousands and thousands of

sparkling, flashing diamonds! The people stood open-
mouthed, and Hanka sat down with surprise when he
saw what he had been carrying.

“That means we may return, for King Winter’s war is 176

over,” said the Tsar. So all the people went back to their
city on the shores of the White Sea, where the streets
were paved with silver, the walls were shining marble,
and the church steeples were topped with gold. The
Tsar sat on his throne again, but he ruled his people
now with mercy and justice, so everyone liked to be
brought before him to see his mild fatherly face.

Hanka was allowed to live in the palace all his life, and
had a silver fishing-rod, a silken line and a diamond
sinker, and was permitted to cast for gold-fish in the
royal pond. King Winter came for a visit once every year
with a little snow just to remind people of his past
reign; but he always found the people ready to joke and
laugh at the bad weather he brought, for they were all
happy and contented who lived in the city of the
Merciful Tsar.
THE END
 Transcriber’s Notes

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