Statistical Distributions [Paperback]

Merran Evans (Author), Nicholas Hastings (Author), Brian Peacock (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0471371246 | ISBN-13: 978-0471371243 | Publication Date: June 15, 2000 | Edition: 3

From the reviews:

"Concise and useful summaries of the salient facts and formulas relating to [various] distributions." -Journal of the American Statistical Association

"A worthwhile reference." -Journal of Quality Technology

Since the previous edition of this popular guide to the most commonly used statistical distributions was published in 1993, statistical methods have found many new applications in science, medicine, engineering, business/finance, and the social sciences. To keep pace with these developments and to highlight the growing influence of statistical software and data management techniques, this new edition is now thoroughly updated and revised. Through clear, concise, easy-to-follow presentations, the authors discuss the key facts and formulas for 40 major probability distributions, fine-tune all existing material, and continue to offer ready access to vital information gleaned from hard-to-find places across the literature. Highly useful both as an introduction to basic principles and as a quick reference guide, Statistical Distributions, Third Edition:
* Presents the 40 distributions in alphabetical order
* Provides all key formulas for each distribution
* Adds a new chapter on the Empirical Distribution Function
* Expands the Weibull Distribution to cover the 3 and 5 parameter versions
* Incorporates diagrams and tables illustrating the characteristics of each distribution
* Discusses the types of application for which distributions are used
* Features references to relevant software packages

Editorial Reviews

Review

[...] a reference work for Everyman. -The Statistician 50 (1) 2001.

From the Publisher

Updated to include 39 of the major probability distributions. Presents key formulas, tables and diagrams for each distribution in a clear, concise format. Provides additional material on variate relationships, estimation and computing. Contains bibliography and Table of Computing References. Employs a consistent nomenclature system. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 221 pages
• Publisher: Wiley-Interscience; 3 edition (June 15, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0471371246
• ISBN-13: 978-0471371243
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,334,719 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Very helpful, February 7, 2004

By 

wiredweird "wiredweird" (Earth, or somewhere nearby) - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 500 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Statistical Distributions (Paperback)

No book can possibly cover all distributions - new ones seem to show up in every new problem that arises. This book covers the common ones, maybe all the distributions a student sees in the first stats course or two.

The coverage is quite good for routine, and some non-routine purposes. I find the characteristic functions especially helpful. Each distribution's description of how it arises is also very useful - it's the kind of information that a practitioner needs in order to apply distributions to problems in meaningful ways.

I know that no book can say everything, but a few additions would have improved this book significantly. More discussion of applications would have helped. So would a discussion of general techniques for generating random numbers - inverse distributions, rejection, etc.

The two real weaknesses I found were in the extreme value and the empirical distributions. Extreme values don't stand alone. They often arise in ways dependent on other distributions. An extreme value distribution might describe the results of many experiments that find the largest of N values drawn from distribution P - with different results according to P. These distributions don't have convenient closed forms, but are amenable to some kinds of analysis anyway.

Perhaps the authors do a reasonable job of empirical distributions in the continuous case, but discrete (categorical) cases arise more in my work. Discrete distributions must answer such questions as: given that my sampling may not have found objects of all possible types, how many unknown types are probably still out there? Lots of problems have distributions too complicated for analysis or too poorly understood for book formulas to work, and must be handled empirically. More discussion of empirical techniques would make this a much stronger reference.

Despite its soft spots, this is a very practical reference. I expect it to be a productive member of my technical library.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Great resource for Statisticians and Quantitative analysts., June 14, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Statistical Distributions, 2nd Edition (Paperback)

I have been browsing in bookstores for months looking for something just like this. It has very detailed descriptions and explanations of important elements, such as mean, variance, moment-generating functions, etc. I was a bit dismayed by the price, but more than happy with the information it provided.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Want to fit distributions ? This is the book !, February 26, 2001

By 

Steve Uhlig (Berlin, Germany) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Statistical Distributions (Paperback)

This is a very good reference for univariate statistical distributions. It provides maximum likelihood and moment estimation formulas for many distributions i'ven't seen anywhere else. That's right that the price is quite high for the number of pages but this information is invaluable for practitioners who need to fit distributions to real data.