The Basic Practice of Statistics w/CD-ROM
$54.00
I wanted to like this book, I really did - . . .but it misses the mark by having too many flaws. As far as textbooks are concerned, it tries to do a good job making statistics assessable to those who do not yet grasp the subject but it fails to do so for a variety of reasons. Unfortunately, many of the concepts are not presented clearly and often assumes that the student has completely mastered them before moving on. This is particularly evident as the book progresses and one needs to hunt for topics that were presented one hundred pages (or more) previously and have not been discussed since.It is necessary to continuously jump around to previous pages in order to find materials being referenced and new examples do not contain all of the information need to solve them. While the solutions to many practice problems are found at the back of the book, they are not explained adequately making it almost impossible to determine how to reach the correct solution.While this text is on the right track (disregarding the author s personal biases regarding his non-statistical political agendas), it is incomplete and leads to many additional (and needless) hours work through. For those who have not had a statistics course, this can cause a lot of grief. I ended up purchasing several other books in order to gain an understanding of what the author did not explain effectively. For me, this was compounded by the fact that our class devoured this book in a mere ten weeks - far too much information (especially when that information is not presented sufficiently) to glean in such a short period of time.
Finally! - It s difficult to write a glowing review for a statistics textbook. Even if it s an excellent book, deserving of five stars, it s treating a subject the study of which, for most people, ranks right up there between watching paint dry and getting warts removed.I ve used several statistics textbooks in teaching, tutoring and studying stats. Some of them had great illustrations, and some had a cool CD in the back. Most had instructions for using a TI calc, Excel or Minitab to solve problems. Some tried to push a sociopolitical agenda through careful selection of examples and problems. But until this book, none of them did a decent job of explaining, in plain language, what all the things in statistics really meant.Finally we have a textbook that explains to the student studying statistics for the first time, what the standard deviation of the mean (to choose a random example) really means, and why he/she should care. Other books may try, but their language is still up there in Math Land. This book gets it right.This book also has the great illustrations, the cool CD in back, the TI/Excel/Minitab instructions. It also has the sociopolitical agenda, as evidenced in the authors choices for examples and problems. In a clever bit of self-parody, the book warns repeatedly about how easy it is to promote a sociopolitical agenda through the judicious use of statistics.The authors announce at the beginning of the book that it will not include any how-to algorithms or practice for calculating basic statistics by hand, since everyone has access to tools that do the hard work for you. That s a disappointment. Every student of statistics ought to calculate a standard deviation by hand once in their life, just so they know how it s done.
information asymmetry - This was supposed to be a free shipping 4 to 5 days delivery item.However, the online tracking systems shows message that was inconsistent to the actual delivery status.Took more than 2 weeks to get the item.
Novice at Stats - I have never taken a Stats course before and I find this book deficient in several areas. First of all, I do not think it gives comprehensive explanation involving many concepts. Secondly, the problems at the end of each chapter incorporate formulas, equations of concepts that haven t been covered previously. Therefore, it s difficult to complete homework without much invesetigation and frustration! Lastly, I do not care for how the book refers back to previous examples on several occcasions. This cause you to have to jump back and forth in the book. Besides that, many of the illustrations have similar titles (e.g. example, figure, exercise..) and can lead to some confusion.
decent - Watch Video Here: http://www.amazon.com/review/R3ALP5NZLRYGL3 I am taking the second semester of this class right now. I had this book for the first semester. One will have to do a lot of reading but the book does a good job explaining concepts. The CD that comes with the book is awesome for testing your knowledge. If I may suggest something that has helped my studies greatly, a little book called Don t Like to Read, Then Don t, Listen!: How to Turn Any Type of Text Into Audio Files That Can Be Read to You!. I know that many students out there are like me and would rather listen to material than have to read it themselves. I use programs like the one that is reading this review to have my texts read to me. This is a god send for me. One can get this title on amazon.