Customer Reviews

Data Analysis With Microsoft Excel (Business Statistics Series)

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

I use this book as the main text book for the first half of a class in statistics and research methods for students from a wide variety of social science and humanities backgrounds, with little formal statistics or mathematics background.

I surveyed my students with 5 questions about the book, with responses on a Likert scale (1=strongly disagree, 3=neutral, 5=strongly aggree. 17 students responded, which is a small enough sample size to caution applicability of results. The mean value of each response appears after the questions I asked.

1.The book was, overall, helpful in explaining statistical concepts. (Mean=2.73). Students would have appreciated more explanation and examples.
2.The book helped me to analyze data. (Mean=2.3)
3.The StatPlus AddIn was, overall, helpful in analyzing data. (Mean=3.76)
4.The StatPlus AddIn worked well on my computer. (Mean=3.7)
5.Overall, I would recommend this book to next year's class. (Mean=3.05)

Thus, overall, weighting each question equally, my students gave the book 3.12 stars.

As a professor, I give the book 4 stars. The organization of the book chapters fit well in an overview course, with one chapter assinged per week. The StatPlus AddIn is worth the cost of the book itself, as it expands the statistical capabilities of Excel without students needing to purchase additional software. There are a wide range of problems and example data sets which come with the book, applicable to a wide range of disciplines. A significant number of students had computer difficulties installing and running the StatPlus AddIn, so I would recommend to the company a support web page with FAQs, at the least.

Students with little preparation in mathematics or statiscs who need a good step-by-step guide to data analysis will find this book helpful, especially if they do the excercises at the end of the chapters. (The publishers should make the answers available to everyone, not just us instructors -- for those working on their own who want to check their work). However, students with some preparation in statistics or mathematics may be better served with a more advanced text.

As a statistics instructor, I found the book and software very helpful. To extract the software is a bit tricky - you need to read pages 8-10 and 76-77 to get the disk installed. Once installed, the Stat Plus Add-In adds extra tools, including a box plot and normal probability plot, that standard Excel does not have. My students use the software in a computer lab.

I was browsing through a local bookstore for a guide to Excel specially tailored for science and engineering applications. I encountered this book and found it very interesting and detailed. It is written in plain English that conveys the message very well. For readers are looking for info about using Excel for statistics (pertaining to business, economics, and social science), this is the perfect book. Yet it does not extrapolate and contain all the necesaary info on science and engineering applications. I still recommend this book for non-scientists.

The statplus pack taht comes with the book, does a great job at solving one of excel shortcomings - not being able to add test labels to points on a scatter plot.
The book it self is too simplistic, does not go into detail on how formulas work. If you need a book to explain the formulas behind excel stats, and how to manipulate them, this is not the book.
However if you are just learning/teaching how to use the formulas for basic analysis this is great.

I purchased this book in October 1999 and received the latest version available.

I had a difficult time with this book because I use Excel 97 and the book has a much earlier version. The book leads you step-by-step through various Excel functions, but if you don't have the same version it's very difficult to figure out.

I called the help desk and was told that they only assist in loading the software that comes with the book. I was told that if I had questions about the program I would have to e-mail them and they would be forwarded to the right person.

Statistics is hard enough without having to go through all the challenges the book and its software currently offer. It has been more trouble to me than it has been worth.

I would not recommend buying the book unless you are working with an early version of Excel.

I use the book for an applied statistics course in the Economics Department at Emory University. Students find the worked examples very easy to follow and the Excel add-ins very easy to use. This text is a great resource for an instructor.

Each of us on our data analysis team were given this book and have used the StatPlus add-ins to create control charts for various processes that we report on, with great success. The add-ins will work in Office Excel 2003 as well. Our company has seen substantially increased productivity and success as a result of the analyses that we are able to do with this book.

Of all the stats books I've had in school, this was the clearest and easiest to understand. Everything is explained in clear simple english. The only drawback was that there was only one recommendation in the regression section on how to improve your linear fit. This could have been expanded, otherwise it was great. I was already an Excel fan, but now I can get rid of my S-Plus and Arc programs.

I bought the book for the diskette's XLA that allows you to add statistical routines to all your spreadsheets. The book clearly explains how to apply the routines with brief commentary and examples. It should not be used as the only stat book you use, but as a supplement to apply the principles already learned.

This is a good book. This book has helped me in doing pivot tables. GOOD BOOK!