38 of 38 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A statistics book that's fun and informative, July 16, 2010
This review is from: What is a p-value anyway? 34 Stories to Help You Actually Understand Statistics (Paperback)
I'm a Ph.D. statistician at Baylor University in the Department of Statistical Science. I teach statistics courses at many different levels, and read several statistics books a year. I'm always on the lookout for a good book that my students can relate to, but rarely - if ever - have I found a book I can recommend to my colleagues, our department's Ph.D. students, M.S. students, undergraduate majors, and those students who are majoring in some other subject area (not statistics) who are required to take a statistics course. That was, until now ...
The little monograph by Andrew Vickers is absolutely a fun book to read - and how many times can it be said that a book about P-values is fun? My husband is often subjected to my very serious face and quietness as I read a statistics book. He often jokes that I look like I'm angry or in pain. But with this book, heard me laugh out loud, and do so often. Andrew Vicker's "What is a p-Value Anyway?" contains 34 short stories that wittily illustrate the correct way to think about and apply statistics in terms everyone can relate to and understand.
Vickers manages to put statistical concepts into a fun, understandable light that is entertaining and informative, no matter what your level of understanding and education in statistics. I highly recommend this book.
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35 of 36 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The funniest and clearest statistics book ever!, April 10, 2010
This review is from: What is a p-value anyway? 34 Stories to Help You Actually Understand Statistics (Paperback)
A couple of years ago, because on an error (?) in the IT system of the Italian IRS (Tax Agency), the incomes of all Italians were downloadable from the Agency site. The "error" was discovered and cleared after a few hours, but in the meantime a lot of people had already downloaded the files.
So did a friend of mine, living in Milan. Early in the morning he called me. His voice sounded, at the same time, angry and depressed. "How can I be so underpaid? I downloaded the incomes of people living in Milan and computed and re-computed the average all the night. I discovered that my salary is very, very low! The mean income of people in Milan is much higher!!" "Well, that's the Berlusconi's effect", I replied, "don't worry, take the median instead of the mean, and you'll recover your self-esteem... and stop your wife's complains".
But I wasn't persuasive enough...at the phone, without paper and pencil, I couldn't explain him the impact of outliers and the meaning of skewness, and he started looking for another job.
Had this happened now, I would simply send him a copy of "What is a p-value anyway", and a couple of pages at the beginning would explain him the concepts, using Bill Gates instead of Berlusconi. The concepts and ideas of statistics are indeed the focus of this book, from basic ones like median and mean, to more advanced ones like hypothesis testing, regression, logistic regression, survival analysis etc. These concepts are explained, without formulas, by means of funny stories, that you can tell to your friends at a party, or use with your students to raise their attention. Moreover, stories stay attached to our neurons, and we, or our student, don't forget them and their embedded concepts.
I strongly suggest this book to everybody: if you don't master statistics, you will eventually understand all you need as a citizen, a voter, a consumer or a patient, and you probably won't be fooled anymore by the bad statistics usually found on newspaper or TV. If you master statistics, and routinely use computational tools, this book will force you think "back to basics" and will remind you that pressing the keys without a clear understanding of your data and your goals, will let you make dangerous errors. Errors, that can affect the health or wealth of the people behind the numbers, "even if you can't see their tears".
P.S. I think this book deserve a translation into many languages. If a publisher is interested in a translation into Italian, please contact me at [...].
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12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Terrific teaching aid for reaching the math-phobic, January 31, 2010
This review is from: What is a p-value anyway? 34 Stories to Help You Actually Understand Statistics (Paperback)
As a teacher in a school of public health and formerly in a medical school, I've been a fan of Dr. Vickers' work for years, beginning with his columns published in Medscape--many of which I'm revisiting in the book. By way of revealing conflict of interest, I sent Dr. Vickers a fan email a few years ago asking "when will you write a book?" because I felt it would be a great supplemental read for my students.
"What is a p-value anyway" won't substitute for an introductory statistics textbook, but it makes a terrific companion piece. Some folks actually come to an understanding of statistics through equations. I once co-presented with a real biostatistician. All the other biostatisticians in the room followed her pointer through the equations like kittens watching a ball. Most of us, though, and definitely most students, need folksier explanations. Dr. Vickers excels at these. He uses simple, catchy examples to teach concepts ranging from the difference between the median and the mean ("So Bill Gates walks into a diner....") through the statistical consequences of multiple testing on the same data set ("Boy meets girls, girl rejects boy, boy starts multiple testing"). I particularly like the title of the last chapter, which echoes my own approach to analysis in health services research: "Statistics is about people, even if you can't see the tears."
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