Customer Reviews

Statistical Methods for Psychology

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Howell's book has been around now for 6 editions - you simply do not get to that stage of publishing a technical book without doing many things very well. I have taught advanced statistics to graduate students and professionals in a variety of programs and settings for over 20 years, and
for an advanced basic course in statistics for graduate students or for knowledgeable professionals, I would not teach from any other text for this level of statistics. If graduate students understood most of the content of this text, they would be better equiped researchers than most currently are for sure. It is true that if this book were to be your first treatment of statistics or if your first course was really not all that thorough or was a long time ago, this text might be difficult for you - but not because the text is poorly done. I also refer this text to graduate students, new Ph.D.s, experienced Ph.D.s who are not statistical experts, and other researchers as a desk reference, and I keep it on my desk and keep a copy in my research lab for my research assistants. Graduate students have always consistently strongly praised the book at the end of the semesters when I have used it. Frankly, I suspect other reviewers of this book who give it low marks have ulterior motives such as steering folks to other specific texts. In this veign, I do not personally know the author, but the author David Howell is a highly respected psychologist with true expertise in statistical methods and who served as chair of his department prior up to his relatively recent retirement at the University of Vermont.

This is the very best book on statistics I've ever seen. Whether you're in Psychology or not, you'll love the clear explanations with practical examples. There's plenty of math for those who want to gain a deep understanding of the subject, but this book is suitable for anyone wishing to finally understand statistics.

I am a university professor who is always looking for an advanced statistics text that will make some of the most common (and some not-so-common) statistical tests understandable and accessible to my students. It is true that this text is not suitable for the novice looking for an introduction to the field. However, for those who already understand the basic principles and concepts, this book is an invaluable tool. My graduate students love it, and I find it to be among the best of its kind.

This text is perhaps the most dangerous type. Because it makes some good points that other texts probably do not cover and includes a broad range of important methodologies and complimentary statistical tests, it may at first appear to be a good text for the graduate level. This appearance of comprehensiveness and expertise is probably especially appealing to those--primarily statistics instructors--who *already* understand the material. However, Howell (in many cases) simply provides too little information for the student to truly comprehend what he is talking about. This is where the danger comes in: an instructor who is already familiar with the material may purchase what appears (to them) to be an excellent text. However, unless that instructor is able to fill in the gaps that Howell leaves, their students will likely be very confused.

Additionally, Howell explains things in a verbose and often overly-complex manner that can confuse even a relatively simple concept. These two factors (lack of important information and overly complex explanations) combine to make the text very challenging to wade through, particularly without the help of supplementary materials (e.g., another, more clearly written text, an online tutorial, or a teacher or tutor who can recognize and explain what Howell skips over).

All in all, I think students are likely to walk away from this text with the opposite experience from that intended. Rather than understanding, appreciating and then applying the important concepts that Howell discusses, they will leave not only confused about these concepts, but perhaps even with an aversion to them and, alas, to statistics in general. Personally, I think this text has the potential to do more harm than good.

I had only taken a very elementary course in Statistics and this book helped me to really improve my knowledge of Statistics. Either you want only to know what's going on in Statistics world or you want to start to learn it to the highest levels, I do recommend this book. I know a lot about Statistics now, but I still go back to the book and review some of the concepts.

Amazon posted my review to the wrong book. Perhaps it was my fault. In any case, i do not see how to delete the review, so I have replaced it with this explanation.

The shipping is extremely fast. Great book condition! The price is a lot more tolerable than the bookstores at my University!

I am annoyed.

I have the fourth edition of this book. In this edition, there was a really awesome description of the derivation of the commonly used formula for the calculating the chi square test statistic. This seems to have been removed from the later editions. While the commonly used formula is ubiquitously taught, X=sum (O-E)^2/E , there are times when the use of this formula is completely incorrect. With the derivation (based on the assumptions of a binomial distribution) it becomes obvious when this test is correct and when it its not. However, it is almost impossible to find this derivation in any statistical book - just magical formulas - WA LA!

There are enough text books out there that dumb down stats to the point of not really teaching them. The reviews of our papers that we get back from reviewers make this painfully, painfully obvious. PLEASE, don't dumb things down any further!

I haven't looked at the rest of the book. Perhaps this is the only omission, but it has gotten my blood boiling.

Also, if you really want to understand stats, you have to ditch the psychologists and go hang with the physicists. Read Bevington's Data Reduction and Error Analysis.

An excellent stats book for first and second semester study in psychology! May be a little too much for the average undergraduate class, but a great resource for graduate level coursework.

This book covers most of the statistical knowledge, detailed and organized. It is worth of reading and purchasing.