Customer Reviews

STAT (with Review Cards and Bind-In Printed Access Card)

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

 

 

I'm writing a review since the only reviews here are for the delivery and not actually the content.

I went to a focus group evaluating this book to see whether my university will adopt it. This book is a product of student requests for what they want in a textbook. Unfortunately, much of the feedback appears to come from students who are not interested in the subject, and so the book is designed like it is for people who don't care to learn.

I did not get to read the book, which would be much more helpful in giving feedback for a focus group, but I did get to look through it superficially. It is designed like a magazine, meant to catch attention with large, flashy pictures irrelevant to the content on nearly every page. There is perhaps at most four paragraphs of text on each page, and I imagine if the design wasn't geared towards distracting students from actually studying the information given, this stat book would be half the length it is now. Students complain about books being too long, so padding an already short book with useless pictures, apparently geared towards keeping student attention, seems backwards when an even shorter book wouldn't leave time for students to feel like their wading through a bunch of material. It would also be a more productive and less expensive use of space. Most relevant images such as diagrams or infographics are usually sparse and tiny by comparison, and that is even more unfortunate for visual learners who actually want to do well in their class.

The crown jewel of bad graphic design was a picture of a glass of coke that took up the whole page, with the text and other images SUPERIMPOSED over it, so you couldn't even read some of the text! I can imagine the graphic designer who was forced to set this up at the will of the editors is crying himself to sleep over this one.

I wish I could say more for the actual content, which would help determine whether the errant philosophy of catering to young students with short attention spans (which turning the pages into a circus seems counter-productive to helping such students learn) and no interest in statistics, is worth wading through. I hope that other reviews will cover this eventually. I also hope this format is not going to become the norm in textbook design.

Aside from that, the online resources that come with this book seem to be very well managed and useful, also catering to the plugged in students of the information age.

I highly recommend buying from this seller. My book arrived in about a week (with standard shipping) and in the condition described online. I was not disappointed at all and was actually surprised when the book arrived so fast.

The book that I got was great and the speed that I got it was decent. Great doing business with you.