Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 1-5 of 29
 Best examples of any statistics textbook October 14, 2009
Philo Calhoun (Santa Fe, NM USA)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
When I initially looked at this textbook, I was disappointed that it has the least extensive number of statistical tests described. There is only a passing mention of Fisher's exact test, no logistic regression, etc. However the examples are by far the best I've seen in any textbook (even non statistics books) and they are very helpful in understanding statistical pitfalls. They make you think more than most advanced texts. The clarity of writing is superb. Since many statistical problems are due to the setup and reasoning of studies, rather than picking the wrong text, this textbook will go far to enable the reader to more critically understand the methodology of studies.
Great text for Statistics beginners August 26, 2009
Jonathan C. Anthony
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
This text was used in an Introductory Statistics course I took at Western Michigan University. I found it to be a delightful book that was designed for students with no or little background in statistics. It attempts to take everyday events and show how statistics can be used to make inferences from them. The book does have worked out problems in the back and answers for selected problems in the text.
This is as good as Statistics gets May 30, 2009
J. R. Anderson (Burnsville, MN United States)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
The nice thing is the authors know how boring their subject is, address it, and actually try to explain Statistics in "layman's terms". The authors portray a sense of humor in their approach that definitely eases a little bit of the tension associated with this kind of learning. I can't stand Statistics but this book really tries hard to make it as painless as possible.
 Colloquial language doesn't help AT ALL April 11, 2009
G. Pfeil
6 out of 7 found this review helpful
I am not a statistics major, nor do I tend to excel in mathematics, but I am capable of achieving if I put enough energy into a subject...that wasn't the case with my stat class last semester, which used this textbook.
This book takes the role of a friendly teacher who dumbs down the material so we "not-so-mathy" students can understand what's going on. The problem, however, is that this book speaks in riddles, teaches in examples, stories, and fake conversations between mathematicians of the past, and doesn't spell out in any clear way what the method is for solving certain types of questions. Also, after using this text for Stat I, I moved on to take Stat II and was pretty lost. In Stat II, they use "scary" language such as p, q, n, instead of "big number" "small number" and "box" (which is used in this text). I found it was much easier for my mind to grasp the consistency and methodology of statistics when using a different, more "advanced" texbook.
Stat can be a very difficult thing to understand when you're treated like a baby. Even my TAs hated this textbook, which kind of says a lot (mainly that a lot of students are confused, and can't get any help from outside tutors who don't speak the pseudo-stat language of this book)
I would not recommend this text to anyone. If you're thinking about taking a Stat class where this text is used, you'd be better off waiting a semester until you can enroll in a class where the teacher values actually learning statistical language.
 Review of 3rd edition vs. 4th edition March 31, 2009
Y. Wong (San Francisco)
2 out of 8 found this review helpful
Some instructors may say the third edition is the same as the fourth edition but actually there are differences in quite a few pages.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 29
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