Statistics, 4th Edition [Hardcover]

David Freedman (Author), Robert Pisani (Author), Roger Purves (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 13, 2007 | ISBN-10: 0393929728 | ISBN-13: 978-0393929720 | Edition: 4th

Renowned for its clear prose and no-nonsense emphasis on core concepts, Statistics covers fundamentals using real examples to illustrate the techniques.

The Fourth Edition has been carefully revised and updated to reflect current data.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

David Freedman received his B.Sc. from McGill and his Ph.D. from Princeton. He has worked as a consultant for the City of San Francisco, the County of Los Angeles, the U.S. Department of Energy, and the U.S. Department of Justice. He has written several previous books and numerous technical papers. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and teaches at the University of California, Berkeley.


Robert Pisani received his B.A. and Ph.D. at the University of California, Berkeley. His research interests include probability models of market-price behavior and the statistical valuation of financial instruments.


Roger Purves received his B.A. at the University of British Columbia and his Ph.D. at the University of California, Berkeley, where he currently teaches. His research interests are in the mathematical foundations of probability theory.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 720 pages
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company; 4th edition (February 13, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0393929728
• ISBN-13: 978-0393929720
• Product Dimensions: 7.5 x 1.6 x 10.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (15 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #10,181 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #2 in Books > Medical Books > Medicine > Internal Medicine > Dermatology
  • #88 in Books > Business & Investing > Popular Economics

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars A CLASSIC.....BUT... September 12, 2011

By Michael S. Poole

Format:Hardcover

I used the first edition of this book in a class I took at Berkeley back in 1989. I again turned to it for a self-study refresher recently and found it's intuitive style quite refreshing and even kinda fun. This book teaches the concepts without all the noise and distraction of more recent books that try to throw in every new technique and software application they can think of. This book is a classic in the field, on a level with Sylvanus Thompson's Calculus Made Easy. No, it won't be the last stats book you ever buy but it will get you up to speed fast and allow you to work much faster through more advanced texts and with a deeper understanding for the theory.

I do have one complaint. I like math and at a few points I wanted to tell the authors to quit teasing me and just give me the equation already. For example, they take several sections of text to introduce correlation and linear regression before finally introducing the actual linear equation. Maybe it's better to introduce it that way, I'm not a teacher. Others have mentioned the lack of standard nomenclature in this book but I can't see how that would be more than a minor inconvenience moving to a more advanced text. Another reviewer mentioned Statistics Unplugged by Sally Caldwell. I also have that book and though it has more standard nomenclature, I found it to be "wordy" and not as intuitive as the book in this review.

62 of 75 people found the following review helpful

1.0 out of 5 stars Colloquial language doesn't help AT ALL April 11, 2009

By G. Pfeil

Format:Hardcover

I am not a statistics major, nor do I tend to excel in mathematics, but I am capable of achieving if I put enough energy into a subject...that wasn't the case with my stat class last semester, which used this textbook.

This book takes the role of a friendly teacher who dumbs down the material so we "not-so-mathy" students can understand what's going on. The problem, however, is that this book speaks in riddles, teaches in examples, stories, and fake conversations between mathematicians of the past, and doesn't spell out in any clear way what the method is for solving certain types of questions. Also, after using this text for Stat I, I moved on to take Stat II and was pretty lost. In Stat II, they use "scary" language such as p, q, n, instead of "big number" "small number" and "box" (which is used in this text). I found it was much easier for my mind to grasp the consistency and methodology of statistics when using a different, more "advanced" texbook.

Stat can be a very difficult thing to understand when you're treated like a baby. Even my TAs hated this textbook, which kind of says a lot (mainly that a lot of students are confused, and can't get any help from outside tutors who don't speak the pseudo-stat language of this book)

I would not recommend this text to anyone. If you're thinking about taking a Stat class where this text is used, you'd be better off waiting a semester until you can enroll in a class where the teacher values actually learning statistical language.

17 of 19 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Best examples of any statistics textbook October 14, 2009

By IsleofGough

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

When I initially looked at this textbook, I was disappointed that it has the least extensive number of statistical tests described. There is only a passing mention of Fisher's exact test, no logistic regression, etc. However the examples are by far the best I've seen in any textbook (even non statistics books) and they are very helpful in understanding statistical pitfalls. They make you think more than most advanced texts. The clarity of writing is superb. Since many statistical problems are due to the setup and reasoning of studies, rather than picking the wrong text, this textbook will go far to enable the reader to more critically understand the methodology of studies.