Customer Reviews

MINITAB Handbook: Updated for Release 14

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

 

 

This is a good book for reference. I use minitab at work and this has proved useful, better than Rath & Strong's "Guide to Minitab" which I also have.

Note, this review refers to the edition that covers up to version 13 of Minitab. But unless the authors have radically re-tooled, then there is no reason to believe there is any major change between my edition and the next one. This assumption is based on reading other reviews of the most recent edition of this handbook.

If you know nothing about Minitab, and you are overwhelmed by the Minitab help files, then this book may be for you. Unfortunately, if you are like me and have a decent understanding of Minitab, then this book will add little or nothing to your existing knowledge base.

I would imagine the target audience is a group of people who have been tasked with analysis at work, and take some sort of workshop/class that covers Minitab with this book used as a "textbook." Further, I would imagine folks taking such a class have never before used Minitab. The book is laid out with chapters/exercises that cover the most rudimentary level of statistics and how to get them with Minitab. There is also some narrative to help interpret findings contained within each chapter. Not bad if these are new concepts for folks, but not appropriate for people who already have even a basic understanding of minitab or other statistical packages.

The book is written by the founders of Minitab, and as I suggest earlier, is really designed to be a primer to get people up and running with Minitab as quickly as possible, without a great deal of breadth or depth. The Minitab help files are insanely extensive (and some of the best I've seen), but as a result are sometimes complicated to navigate. Plus, some of the application help is predicated on a an existing knowledge of Minitab, so you have to know what to search for.

To sum up, if you have no previous knowledge or experience with Minitab, or any other stat packages (e.g. spss, sas, etc...), then this handbook is a decent resource. On the other hand, if you already have a baseline knowledge of Minitab or other packages, I would look elsewhere. Either rely on the Minitab help files themselves, or try to snag the most recent version you can find of the "Minitab Reference Manual." At least the reference manual goes into much greater depth regarding command structure, available commands, and a decent treatment of macros.

The book doesn't leave the basic info. out.

For those individuals who are familar with PC or window's basic functions, the introductory pages may be tedious and annoying.

It's an OK book for an introductory level material.

I bought this book for use in my statistics course and while it's helped a couple times, it's really not made a giant difference. I think a big part of the reason is that I don't have much experience with Minitab or computer language, so understanding the "why" of some of the steps is difficult. I'm glad that I have it and the few times it's helped me I've been grateful for it, but on the whole I'm not sure it'll make a big difference in improving my understanding of Minitab (no more so than just reading through the "Help" section in the program itself).

This can't be called a handbook. It is not detailed enough. It should be called Minitab for beginner.

Good Minitab Manual for begining study Statistics with Minitab software.

It is a good book for students and beginners. I would like to see a stronger chapter 18 (Macro)