Customer Reviews

Statistics: the Conceptual Approach

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I examined a number of statistics texts from the university library and this one was streets ahead of any other in the quality of its explanations and discussion of statistical concepts. Statistics is not mathematics and, perhaps, for mathematicians this book might be a little simple. It is my experience that those obsessed with the maths of stats really know very little about the problems of the sciences for which stats is a useful tool. This book is for those who want a `conceptual' approach

If you learn things more easily when you understand the underlying theory or concepts behind how they work, this book is for you. If you are comfortable just knowing the formulas and doing the math, this book is proabably not a good choice. My learning style is the former, so I gobbled this book up and enjoyed every page. I am not new to statistics but have never liked the terse, poorly explained, math-speak that turns most statistics books into barely comprehensible jargon-choked slogs. If you have to use statistics to do your job or need to understand why to use certain types of tests rather than others, read this book.

As the title of this book states, it takes a "conceptual approach." For an introductory audience, it takes great steps to de-mystify statistics. It instills an intuitive knowledge of statistics in the reader, a feature sorely lacking in most, more technical books. This book is user friendly and even, dare I say, FUN to read.

This is probably the most disappointing university text book that I have ever bought. Its informal style may appeal to some, but too often, it simplifies the topic so much, that you don't really learn anything. On our first day, our professor said that he "hated this book but was obliged to use it." I tried to give it a chance. The formulas are not presented until the end of the chapter, and there are very few examples given, leaving the reader to try the exercises blindly. I'm sure there are better statistics texts out there.