Statistics: Principles and Methods [Hardcover]

Richard A. Johnson (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0471656828 | ISBN-13: 978-0471656821 | Publication Date: November 4, 2005 | Edition: 5

Easy to read, easy to understand


Now revised with updated exercises, Johnson and Bhattacharyya's Fifth Edition of Statistics: Principles and Applications once again offers an easy-to-read, easy-to-understand introduction to statistics. The authors use real-world examples, fresh hands-on exercises, and crystal clear explanations to motivate students to explore the powerful ideas of modern statistics.


Fresh exercises

Exercises and data sets are updated throughout for currency. Each major section and chapter in the text ends with a set of exercises that provides students with the opportunity to practice the ideas they just learned. Data sets are available on the book's website at www.wiley.com/college/johnson.


Engaging applications

A wide variety of timely example applications throughout the text connect statistics to real-life problems. Extended Statistics in Context examples reveal the value of understanding statistics. This Fifth Edition features new screen shots and keystrokes for MINITAB, Excel, and TI-83 integrated into the text examples, as appropriate, as well as new technology manuals for MINITAB, Excel, and TI-83 on the book's website.


A student-friendly approach

Featuring an engaging writing style with easy-to-follow explanations, this text makes statistics accessible to students from a wide range of disciplines. Johnson and Bhattacharyya help students understand the meaning behind key statistical methods, appreciate the underlying logic of statistics, and recognize the possible pitfalls of statistical analysis.

Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher

Retaining the successful format of previous editions this update develops students' understanding of the reasonings by which findings from sample data can be extended to general conclusions and a familiarity with several basic statistical techniques. Provides succinct explanations of the concepts and important statistical terminology. Authentic settings motivate the statistical ideas and well-organized discussions cover techniques, with heavy emphasis on examples. Contains a new section that illustrates the use of a probability distribution in a practical setting as well as more data-based exercises. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From the Back Cover

Easy to read, easy to understand

Now revised with updated exercises, Johnson and Bhattacharyya’s Fifth Edition of Statistics: Principles and Applications once again offers an easy-to-read, easy-to-understand introduction to statistics. The authors use real-world examples, fresh hands-on exercises, and crystal clear explanations to motivate students to explore the powerful ideas of modern statistics.

Fresh exercises

Exercises and data sets are updated throughout for currency. Each major section and chapter in the text ends with a set of exercises that provides students with the opportunity to practice the ideas they just learned. Data sets are available on the book’s website at www.wiley.com/college/johnson.

Engaging applications

A wide variety of timely example applications throughout the text connect statistics to real-life problems. Extended Statistics in Context examples reveal the value of understanding statistics. This Fifth Edition features new screen shots and keystrokes for MINITAB, Excel, and TI-83 integrated into the text examples, as appropriate, as well as new technology manuals for MINITAB, Excel, and TI-83 on the book’s website.

A student-friendly approach

Featuring an engaging writing style with easy-to-follow explanations, this text makes statistics accessible to students from a wide range of disciplines. Johnson and Bhattacharyya help students understand the meaning behind key statistical methods, appreciate the underlying logic of statistics, and recognize the possible pitfalls of statistical analysis.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 688 pages
• Publisher: Wiley; 5 edition (November 4, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0471656828
• ISBN-13: 978-0471656821
• Product Dimensions: 7.7 x 1.2 x 9.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #65,912 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Decent plug-and-chug, but TOTALLY non-rigorous, March 4, 2005

By 

Julian Elson "Jules" (Chicago, IL USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Statistics: Principles and Methods (Hardcover)

Statistics: Principles and Methods is the size of a statistics textbook, but it's content would be more appropriate as a statistics primer handed out in, for instance, a social sciences or biology class. It gives an overview of the basic methods of statistics, but it fails utterly to go into any degree of detail. It's sole discussion of the Central Limit Theorem, for instance, is "Whatever the population, the distribution mean of a sample is approximately normal when sample size is large." Well, there's a little more than that, basically restating it mathematically, but there is no proof of the CLT. In fact, there is not even the outline of a proof. Even more egregiously for practical matters is the fact that the standard distribution is not even formulated! It's properties are discussed, but the function which yields the standard distribution, as originally described by Gauss, never appears in the text! Literally the only way to use the standard distribution if you're going by this textbook is to pull out a graphing calculator and go into the "stat" section. A lot of the time, you'd do as well with a TI-89 manual as this book.

If there is a redeeming feature ot this book, it's that it's attractive: the zebras on the cover are nice, it has some good (applied) examples, and it has cool pictures at the beginning of every chapter. That's it, though.

If the contents of this book were condensed into a 20-page pamphlet and sold as "The Sparknotes guide to statistics" or something, and sold for $5, it might be worth it. It isn't worth $90, however.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Good information, but too many mistakes, December 17, 2006

By 

K. Bradbury (New Brunswick, NJ) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Statistics: Principles and Methods (Hardcover)

As a student who is currently using this textbook, I am pleased with how easy it is to follow. The concepts are not very difficult to grasp, and after doing a whole multitude of practice problems which are at the ends of most sections, and all chapters, the subject is not hard to understand. Unfortunately, this book has entirely too many typographical errors. They aren't on every page, of course, but as a 5th edition book I feel that finding 2 or 3 errors per chapter is not acceptable. There are also many errors in the answer guide, which can be extremely confusing to students who are just learning the concepts. And they aren't just typos. There are a few instances where a problem was initially begun by using one value, and by the end of the problem they were using a different value, so the parts don't match up. And even in the in-text examples there are discrepancies. It is a shame that such a widely used textbook should have all these mistakes. I would advise teachers to be aware of this and to look carefully at all the examples and problems so students can be notified of errors before they get confused.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Better than my current text, but not by enough, November 29, 2006

By 

Charles Ashbacher (Marion, Iowa United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Statistics: Principles and Methods (Hardcover)

As a teacher of a class in basic statistics, I am always trolling for the newest and better statistics text. Therefore, that was the mindset with which I examined this book. Without question, I could use it as the text for my course. All of the primary topics I consider essential are covered and the quality of the exposition is excellent. The coverage of a basic statistics class is well-known, so I will not spend the time here listing the topics that are covered. My students could read this book with relative ease, at least within their natural capability to understand the topic. There are many examples, a large number of exercises at the end of each section and solutions to the odd-numbered exercises are included in an appendix.
The obvious question to answer at this point is,"Will I be adopting it for my statistics class?" No, I will not. I am currently using "The Basic Practice of Statistics 4th Edition" by David S. Moore and have been using his text for several years. My basic policy is to change texts only when I find one significantly better and this book did not meet that admittedly higher standard. It is better, but not by enough.