Review
This textbook is intended for graduate students in statistics seeking to learn the basic principles of graphical design for the presentation of data. Experienced statisticians can also find this book very useful as it has a comprehensive discussion of graphical displays as well as R commands listed for many of the textbook’s examples. … This textbook is also a handy reference for graphical analysis and contains engaging examples of real-world data and exercises for those seeking reference on statistical graphics at the end of each chapter.
—Vanessa Narayanassamy, Significance, December 2011
The chapter exercises are the highlight of this book, and a valuable resource for teachers. The problems are well conceived, methodical, and reinforce objectives discussed in the chapter. … Aspects of the text may be a valuable resource for an introductory statistics course which uses R. The extensive chapter exercises should give students ample practice. … For the experienced R user, the book is a handy reference to create sophisticated graphical summaries for one- and two-variable visualization problems.
—Samuel J. Frame, The American Statistician, August 2011
The author states that it can be used as a textbook for a dedicated course on graphical data analysis or as a supplementary text in courses in statistics and data analysis. My general reaction is that it succeeds in these goals. … The book is impressive for the sheer number of graphs … these graphs are quite well done …
—Biometrics, 67, September 2011
The emphasis in the book is on graphs for single discrete and continuous variables and bivariate relationships thereof, and it is very thorough in that regard. … The author also gives a lot of attention to detail … quite suitable as a course textbook, either as a supplementary text for a regular statistics course or as the main text for a specialized course on graphical methods. … The book certainly achieves its goal, increasing graphicacy, that is, the ability to display and exchange information with graphics. I thoroughly enjoyed reading the book and would recommend it to anyone interested in learning more about graphical displays of quantitative information.
—Statistics in Medicine, 2011, 30
This is a textbook for graduate students in statistics and a helpful resource for practitioners. It provides a comprehensive discussion about methods for data representation and graphical display, and a guideline on when, which and how they can be applied.… I found the examples particularly useful. The author thoroughly evaluates competing graphical methods in terms of effective display when applied to the same data. There is a series of exercises at the end of each chapter, which complements its worked examples. … a valuable resource for practitioners in seeking a reference on statistical graphics.
—Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, Series A, April 2011
The book is methodical and complete … Reading this book will give you the ability to recognize and create the majority of the named graphics of statistics … . I would recommend this book if you were interested in a detailed survey of 1D and 2D graphics … .
—Journal of Statistical Software, September 2010, Volume 36
About the Author
Kevin J. Keen is a statistician and an associate professor of mathematics at the University of Northern British Columbia in Prince George, Canada.
