Customer Reviews

Elementary Statistics

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I found this text, eighth edition, very unsatisfactory. Well, actually dreadful. First off, the text is filled with well over a thousand end of chapter exercises, most of which are ignored by prof and students. It's just simply overkill. Ten or fifteen are enough, no need for a hundred! Secondly, the text nearly brings on epileptic seizures with its cluttered and distracting pages-god help those with ADD. Each page is filled with so many boxes, notes, colors, numerous different fonts, and little irritating sidebar messages, the page/material is literally a swamp to move through, and difficult to review on the return journey. Such return journey's are expected with statistics, but they become a seriously increased burden when utilizing this MESS of a book. I've truly enjoyed my statistics course and plan to start the grad stats course track this fall. Unfortunately, I had to turn to healey(3rd) and devore(1st), for clarity and support. I stumbled on to moore and mccabe(4th) while reviewing harvard's/columbia's/new york university's syllabus's in a desperate search for alternate texts. It appears like it MIGHT be the best of all worlds as an intro text, though slightly mathematical. The clarity in writing coupled with some space on the page to breathe, think, and reflectively absorb (as well as simply locate, identify and read the formulas with ease) helped me to learn, and reduced my (somewhat controlled) math anxiety. I checked out freedman(3rd). It appears a little on the narrative side, still professionally technical and theoretical, but with some creamy chocolate goodness mixed in due to an amusing writing style. It appears smart, thoughtful, and charming. Sort of the Cary Grant of statistics texts. Style and substance. But I drift......If you see johnson and kuby's elementary statistics, RUN, RUN! to ANY OTHER text!

Hey, I am not a math person... And this book was really confusing.. Filled to the brim with problems to work out, it leaves little room for explanation! If you have this book. You'd better hope that you have a good professor!

Imagine having to cover this nightmare of a book in three weekends spread over six weeks. Can't really say that I know anything more about Sadistics now than when I started.