Customer Reviews

Fundamental Statistics for the Behavioral Sciences

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

I've been using the 3rd edition for several years now, and I just think it's an extraordinarily clear, concise, and well-written book. Howell is better at presenting the basic statistical concepts (of ANOVA, for example) than any other author I've seen.

Other introductory books (such as Runyon's "Fundamentals of Behavioral Statistics") may provide more advanced treatments or cover more material, but in general they end up being long-winded and unfocused. Howell's book is crisp.

And in case you're wondering about the title, statistical methods for the behavioral sciences are not different than statistical methods in any other quantitative discipline. It's just that Howell draws his examples from psychology, sociology, etc., and may make mention of some of the conventions used by researchers in these fields.

This may be the single best textbook I have ever used, or it may just seem that way because of the difficulty most stat textbooks have in explaining their concepts. Unfortunately, I only discovered it after two semesters of incoherent text books and bad teaching; it was only later, through his book, that I got the entire picture. Howell starts with the "why?" of statistical tests (necssary, but often not done), takes you through the equations relatively painlessly, and provides realistic commentary on actual uses, strengths and weaknesses, and controversies surrounding statistical techniques. I now tutor in statistics (really), and I just rely on Howell for the simplest and best method of explication. Now, if only he wrote an advanced text...

This text is the most clearly written and useful of four different introductory statistics texts that I have examined. Its emphasis on insight rather than rote learning of formulae makes the subject easily understood and retained.

This book is a "keeper".

The author stresses the use of computers discusses several statistics programs available. He also thoughtfully provides exercise data for input to several a computer program. It is unfortunate, however, that he failed to mention the most powerful of these programs on the market today. I hope that he will examine this in future editions.

I have been using this text for Levels 1, 2, and 3 social sciences statistics teaching in Britain and abroad for over 8 years now. Although I have tried using other introductory texts, I have yet to find a text as comprehensive and as clearly written as this.

Howell writes well and provides multiple examples but there is no justifiable reason for (a) multiple editions within a short time span (this is the THIRD in the course of my PhD), and (b) blatant errors (e.g. he states, this is the same result we saw in Table x and it isn't). At this price I expect a product to be near perfect. I still have the 4th edition (published by Duxbury) and it would have served fine for my current course of advanced inferential stats. Fortunately the binding fell apart in the 5th edition and I was able to get my money back, saving me $100 on three purchases in five years of essentially the same book. As I said: Good, but no reason for new edition.

It's a good book, as far as statistics textbooks go. It makes a tough subject very easy to understand, using many accessible examples and simple terms. Most of the other students in my class had trouble with this course. I was one of the only ones who actually read the assigned chapters, and I was the only one who got a 98 in the class. So, I think that says something!

This is a pretty decent statistics book. It has few, if any, examples for each chapter. The questions at the end of each chapter, however, are written well and help you to understand the material a little better. I think it would be difficult if you were relying solely on this book and not an instructor to learn the material. But overall, it is a decently written school book.

I liked the explanations given about every step while learning the steps of analysis. The book explains 'how and why' in simple language. Also, the print outs of the computerized format of the analysis helped me! Definitely recommend this book for a beginner like me!

I don't really see much point in going into length reviewing a school textbook, but to provide some expectations I will say that this book was very easy to read and even enjoyable at times. (Though I did find more than a few typos.) I didn't find it a struggle to keep myself reading the text, which was helpful in preventing procrastination actually. All you have to do is get yourself to some comfortable spot and open up the book, Howell takes care of the rest.

I ordered this on the 19th from Book Holders and it arrived just this morning in the mail. I need the book for a stats course I'm taking for my fall quarter and I didn't want to dish out near $200 to buy it from the campus bookstore. I was happy to find this book available here on Amazon (and nearly $90 cheaper in price) and I'm very pleased that it arrived so quickly. (I haven't even gone to my first stats class yet!) The quality of the item is great; you can hardly tell it was a used book. Highly recommend buying from the seller and will definitely be shopping on Amazon again.