Customer Reviews

Statistics (9th Edition)

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

The fact that this book is in its tenth edition is an indication of its popularity. Many years ago I taught courses in business statistics at the advanced undergraduate and first year graduate level in the business school at Cal State Fullerton. I found it to be an excellent text to teach out of at that time. Since many editions have occurred since then and Terry is a third authored introduced in editions after the one I taught out of I really can't give a review of this edition. But I do think it will be helpful to amazon readers to know that McClave and Benson have a very good track record as authors of business statistics texts and Terry Sinich has coauthored a number of successful introductory and intermediate level statistics books. I am confident that this book is well written and has kept up with the advances in time series analysis that affects typical business related statistical problems.

I taught out of the 9th edition of this book and I liked it a lot. This is the perfect book for a second course in "methods statistics", i.e. a book about how to do the calculations, when to do them, and what they mean. There are no proofs or derivations, just recipes, but supplied with a lot of worked out examples, and an excellent discussions of when what methods are appropriate.

My gripe with the 10th edition is that the last two chapters, Time Series, and Non-parametric Statistics, are not printed on paper, but only available on the supplied student CD. These are two of the chapters that I teach, and I find it unacceptable that the students will not have these chapters in the book, but will have to look at them on the screen. Or, if they decide to print them out, our department budget for printing and copying will be bancrupted. The publisher's explanation was that this was done "to save printing costs". Yet, the new edition is not any cheaper than the previous one!

Reluctantly, I am switching to an inferior text by a different publisher, just because it has all its chapters printed.

I was a member of the text selection committee that chose this book for our school division's advanced placement statistics course. It was a wise decision. The text is filled with contemporary examples that grab a student's attention. It is particularly good at using technology both in the exercises and in the discussion. My students were very comfortable with the reading level, and DID READ the text! I especially liked the project suggestions at the end of each chapter. The text's one weakness is the discussion and placement of the linear regression material. I needed a simpler approach and to do it much earlier in the course (after chapter 2). I had to supplement with material from other sources. However, this is a rather minor complaint compared to the text's many other strengths.

This book is OK, but very overpriced. It's heavy with glossy pages, and is a real back breaker in a school bag. The examples are ok, but don't explore concepts very far or in depth. I often found myself thinking, "what about this case, or what about this case?" and couldn't find any satisfactory answers. It's definitely an introduction book to stats.

It has answers to odd-numbered problems in the back. The solution manual for this is not great, and only covers questions the even-numbered problems. How this makes sense, I have no idea.

It has some quick reference equations on the inside covers, which is definitely a nice touch. But save some money, buy it used. It is by no means a classic text.

For a non-calculus statistics book this is an easy way to grasp the basic concepts. I am using this with an inexpensive statistics course taught by paper correspondence method from the USDA Graduate School. To augment it, I am using an older edition of Devore, Probability and Statistics for Engineering and the Sciences.

I had taken a statistics course previous to using this book and never really felt that interested in the subject. We used this in our MBA curriculum and I was able to see why statistics is applicable and actually quite interesting. There are a number of semi-practical problems which help to put the subject in context. Overall the book is pretty clear and easy enough to get through.

I recommend getting the bundle package which includes the answer book as well as a helpful Excel workbook (I wish our course had used the workbook more, but I read it in conjunction with most of the lessons and found it very helpful). I don't give the book 5 stars for a couple of reasons. 1st, it is really expensive and also it is very large. I feel that American textbook problems feel that putting in a bunch of filler photographs that don't help anybody justifies putting a huge mark up on textbooks. Secondly, I think the authors/publishers could have found a more seamless way to integrate Excel and SPSS into the text. Overall pretty satisfied.

The title sells this book a bit short. It is a very useful intermediate treatment of statistics, that is of value to those interested in more than business and economics. I say intermediate because it does not contain the theorems and mathematical proofs found in an advanced book, but is much more comprehensive than what one would find in an introductory book. The book contains all of the usual sections - statistics and statistical thinking, describing sets of data, probability, random variables, distributions, confidence intervals, tests of hypothesis, etc.; as well as some more advanced topics such as: statistical quality control, regression analysis, model building, descriptive analysis and forecasting, design of experiments, decision analysis and evaluating uncertainty in research and development. The aim of the book it to provide practical tools as opposed to mathematical rigor. Some topics, such as regression analysis, design of experiments and evaluating uncertainty in research and development are definitely science oriented, rather than being just oriented to business and economics.

I liked this book and recommend it to businessmen and scientists as well as to students.

Having taken an introductory college course that used this book up through most of chapter 9 (infrences based on two-samples using confidence intervals and hyopthesis tesing), I must say as usually happens in intro stat textbooks, the probablity chapter (3) is the weakest area, it needs more worded explinations on counting rules to clarify seemingly ambiguous situations. I've also heard professors complain that some of the examples used are over simplified and ignore obvious possiblities in the interpertations of results that add new dimentions to the problem. Not to mention the whole things needs a few more passes by some competent editors, as there's quite a few painfully obvious mistakes and misprints. Other than that, it's understandable enough, the applications problems are welcome, if occasionally flawed. For a more intensive introduction to general statistics, I suggest you seek a textbook that wasn't aimed at the widest possible market. (try the texts that say something like: statistics for engineers)

I had to buy this book for Business Statistics, and some of the homework problems are poorly written. One particular example is when the book asks for the "percentile ranking for the age of 25 years in the distribution of all ages of licensed drivers stopped by the police." All they wanted you to do was take the full 100 percent and subtract it by the number they give you, but the way they word it makes it seem like you need magic powers to divide the percentage of people stopped based on their ages.

My professor said having the last two chapters on the CD is done to save printing costs. I dread to think of how expensive this book would be (at the actual college bookstore) if the last two chapters were included in the book.

Received this book secondhand, has lots of highlighting and writing, sometimes so much that I can't really read what the textbook says.

I've only read the first three chapters of this book and so far it seems like a fairly well organized book; there are questions after each section, but most of the content of the book so far is examples. I would say it is a decent book for an introductory course because it does not delve into too many details about all the formulas.