Customer Reviews

The Basic Practice of Statistics

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

 

 

This book provides an excellent formal introduction to statistics for undergraduates in all disciplines. It is the book I would teach out of for such a course. For specialty areas, I would choose a different text. Courses designed for engineers or health science majors should emphasize the techniques that are most commonly used in their discipline and the examples and applications in their discipline should be emphasized. With that said, there are still many introductory courses at universities that would be well served with this as the text.
I am reviewing the first edition published in 1995. Apparently a second edition has just recently been published. As Moore says in his introduction the text is written as "an introduction to statistics for students in two-year and four-year colleges and universities that emphasizes working with data and statistical ideas." He is true to his word. He follows the guidelines of the professional societies (ASA and MAA) which recommend emphasis on statistical thinking, more data and concepts,less theory and fewer recipes in teaching introductory statistics. They also emphasize active learning in the classroom. This book does all three but is more formal than his first book which presented and emphasized concepts very well but was not structured like a traditional course. Although the text can be used for active learning, it does not go all the way toward the currently popular approach of an activity-based course as has been initiated by Velleman and more recently by Moore himself in his activity based text "The Active Practice of Statistics."

Instructors of introductory statistics courses would be well advised to use one of Moore's text or the other text "Statistics" by Freedman et al.

In comparison with other statistics books, I found this one to be lacking. Important definitions were introduced but they were not expanded. The questions presented during and at the end of the chapters were okay but the references in the chapter that should have provided the answers were inadequate. I felt it was a poorly written, poorly organized book that cannot hold a candle to the majority of college level introductory level statistic textbooks.

This is one of the most readable mathmatics textbooks I have ever seen. I highly reccomend it, especially to high school students taking AP statistics.

This book is alright, yet lacks the necessary steps required to make it understandable. It skips over widely used and necessary information. I would not reccomend this book.

I found this book particularly frustrating in its lack of a comprehensive index and glossary, overabundance of examples, lack of textual explanation, and complete absence of calculator instruction. I do not recommend this book for those taking a summer or online class in Statistics. This text requires an instructor to explain the principles properly as the book fails to do this.

This book has ok examples and explanations of them, but the wording of the text is horrible. I do not think I would of understood it if I hadn't gone to class everyday and hear my professor explain it.

I read part of chapter 1 and didnt read any more.. extremely dull. Good for reference,not for reading

I accidentally bought the wrong edition of this textbook from this seller. A little more information from the seller would have reduced the risk of this happening.