Customer Reviews

Mathematical Statistics with MATHEMATICA

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

Just as a note, the mathStatica CD-ROM that comes with the book requires that you register the software before using it. This is fine if you always run on the same system, but becomes problematic if you use several different systems (as I do.) You can pay an additional fee to have the software run on one system and a second, personal system.

The book looks very good but only if you have over $150 to spend. The book covers Mathematica and using an add on package designed for Mathematica 4. The software included with the book does not work with Mathematica 5 and they want an additional $89 for the version 5 update. If you want to see for yourself the site with deetails on the software is here:

http://www.mathstatica.com/

I bought this book only to find that mathStatica on the bundled CD does not work with the current 5.0 version of Mathematica. The website wants $89 to upgrade the version to a "new" version that will work with 5.0. This upgrade costs more than the price of the book! Seems like a classic bait & switch....

This is a splendid book that comes bundled with marvellous software.

(i) Book: The book is roughly the level of Hogg & Craig and up. It is academically precise (no waffle) with an emphasis on problem solving rather than proofs. The CD includes an identical MATHEMATICA version of the book (with navigation palettes that open when you load the software). So, if I want to look up how to create a copula or a mixture distribution or find the pdf of an order statistic or generate random numbers from some arbitrary custom pdf no-one has even heard of before, I just go to the electronic index, click on the entry, and I immediately have a structure for my own example, without having to re-type anything. Very neatly done! And with the bundled software, I can solve problems in a few seconds that took me hours and hours last month. It all fits like a glove and it is a pleasure to use. More importantly, perhaps, it is fun to use. My only gripe is that it would have been nice if some of the pictures in the printed text where in color, but this is a tiny minor gripe because they are already in color in the electronic version anyway.

(ii) Software: The book comes packaged with the MathStatica CD. Book owners can register it for free (basic version); you can evaluate everything in the book with it (it is not crippled) and it includes online ?function Help. I have used several MATHEMATICA applications and the standard/quality of mathStatica is just way ahead. Application packages normally cost $$$ or $$$ or more, so the bundling of mathStatica with this book is like getting Xmas early. Getting a password was a breeze and it turned up in my email box within about 30 seconds.

Most impressed with the book and with mathStatica.

At the present time (Dec 2003) this software is not compatible with Mathematica 5.0 (check the mathstatica website) and the trial verison of Mathematica which comes with the book expires after 30 days.

I have decided to use parts of this book to teach complex statistical theory issues to biologists. This allows focusing on the statistical, rather than on the mathematical aspects of inference. For example, the section on parameter-mix distributions can be used to motivate hierarchical or random effects models.

In general, the book is clear and well written. I look forward to a second edition, in which I would like to see some coverage of Bayesian methods and of Markov chain Monte Carlo procedures.

This text comes bundled with mathStatica 1.0. The version of the bundled software works fine with Mathematica 4, but not at all with Mathematica 5. Mathematica 5 users need to upgrade to the latest version of the mathStatica software which is mathStatica 1.5 at the time of my writing this. While this costs extra, book owners receive a $70 discount - not too bad given that the book costs a similar amount altogether. The mathStatica software is excellent - I'm not going to review it here - this is a book review, not a software review - suffice to say it won the CompStat Best Software award.

As for the book, this is a modern text with clean modern ideas expressed in a rigorous and clear manner. The CD includes everything as Mathematica notebooks that open chapter by chapter from palettes, live indexing etc - nice.

Much of the material in 'Math Stats with Mma' is similar to Kendall's "Advanced Theory of Stats", and yet despite the material being of an advanced level, the elegance of this text, when combined with Mathematica and the mathStatica software, is that the 'advanced' material becomes 'easy' and manageable, even at an undergrad level, as others have noted. I would not normally comment on other comments, but Mr Dudding's assertion (see comment below) that the level is 'barely undergrad' is just silly, if not confused. Making something that is difficult into something that is easy takes considerable skill and expertise and that is what this text is all about -- whereas any idiot can do the converse: take something simple and make it appear difficult. Dudding seems to want to take a clean modern text on stat computing and clutter it up with formal proofs that already exist in 1001 other texts on math stats - I just don't see how such proofs - usually well-known - belong in ANY book on computational statistics ... and they certainly don't belong here. As appropriate for a text on stat computing, this one gets down to solving your problems, not just repeating the material every other text repeats.

Much to recommend. I'd like to see some MCMC material added. Five stars.

I waited for several years for this book to come out and it was worth the wait. The additional insights I obtained in the first few chapters were worth the price. The CD-Rom contains some HEAVY WEIGHT math and programming that eclipse the time and abilities most have to devote to this process. Rose and Smith have come up with a suite of tools that truly expand the use and power of an already great program. If you buy only one Mathematica book, buy this one. If you buy only one statistics book, buy this one.

Although Mathematica is a very versatile package, the developers at Wolfram have largely ignored statistical applications beyond the very basic. For example, even its basic uniform random generator is rather primitive and users have to recourse to third party solutions available freely on the web. There clearly is a need for development in this area and I purchased this book with much hope.

However, after reading this book, I could not figure out whether this was supposed to teach Mathematical Statistics or Mathematica. In my opinion, it does neither.

The level of mathematical statistics covered is barely up to undergraduate level. There are virtually no proofs and the lack of rigor is often distracting. The intuitive ideas behind some of the basic results are helpful, but there are much better texts already in the market in this regard.

As far Mathematica is concerned, *the entire Mathstatica package is encrypted so you never get to see the code!* You just have to accept it as a black box. This makes the book practically useless for me. Btw, even after purhcasing the book you do not get the entire software package but a limited version of it. They want about $89 more for the full version. Most of the book teaches how to use this package, and barely adds anything beyond the help files. There is virtually nothing new to learn about Mathematica or implementing statistics in Mathematica in this book!

This book by no means an addition to the academic literature. It is more of a software advertisement and that too is rather overpriced for what it achieves.

UPDATE JULY 2009:

As of 3Q09, they have still not released the software compatible with Mathematica 7.0 leave alone 6.0. A delay of a little less than 2 years - completely unacceptable for a software. Anyway, I think Wolfram is effectively going to put them out of business. Check out these new capabilities in Mathematica itself, rendering a lot of mathstatica's features obsolete.
[...]
Also, it look like their "bait and switch" tactics are still causing a lot of heartburn. I am revoking a couple of stars.....(as soon as I figure out how:)

ORIGINAL REVIEW:

This review is more about the software that accompanies the book rather than the chapters in the book itself. (which of course, is the whole point of the book).

I bought this product about 6 months ago, while I was in the middle of writing a couple of papers and found this to be a great tool. This is one of those rare products that makes useful but complicated things simple and easy. Even those of us who are gifted enough not to be turned off by symbolic prose will agree that there is a certain resistance to explore and learn something that's got mathematical symbols all over it - this piece of software will help overcome exactly that, not to mention how good Mathematica is by itself.

Having said that, if you are not comfortable say, at the level of "Statistical Inference" by Casella and Berger (one of the best books on the topic ever written), then this will do much less for you than you read in its reviews. Also I see from quite a few previous reviews that there is resentment at the authors not being totally upfront about the fact that it requires at least another $[...] (student version) to harness the power of this software totally. The professional version will set you back by about $[...].

Pros:

Great software. It does amazing things that used to take me hours by hand. Seemingly ugly or unsolvable problems are easily attacked.

Great customer service - I have emailed them a few times both about installation AND STATISTICAL questions and they are great with both. Seem like a pretty well run shop. Despite other reviews, the price is worth it.

Of course, if price is too much of a concern and you have all the time in the world, you can program these in Mathematica yourself - but these pre-programmed functions are much better. (I have tried).

Cons:

Not for a novice or statistical enthusiast. Please read the title - It does say "Mathematical Statistics" for Mathematica. So make sure you are at least at the level of Hogg/Craig or Casella/Berger etc.

As of 3/08, this is not compatible with Mma 6.0, but the website says they will be releasing the next version in 1Q 08, may be by the end of the month.