Cartoon Guide to Statistics Illustrated Edition, Kindle Edition

by Larry Gonick (Author), Woollcott Smith (Author) Format: Kindle Edition

Flip to back Flip to front

Audible Sample Playing... Paused You are listening to a sample of the Audible narration for this Kindle book.
Learn more

ISBN-13: 978-0062731029

ISBN-10: 0062731025

Why is ISBN important?

Other Sellers

from

Other Sellers

See all 10 versions

Buy

$13.99

eBook features:

Highlight, take notes, and search in the book
Length: 230 pages
Due to its large file size, this book may take longer to download

Read with the free Kindle apps (available on iOS, Android, PC & Mac), Kindle E-readers and on Fire Tablet devices. See all supported devices

Sold by: HarperCollins Publishers

Print List Price: $19.99 Save $6.00 (30%)‎

Price set by seller.

Enter a promotion code or Gift Card

If you have ever looked for P-values by shopping at P mart, tried to watch the Bernoulli Trails on "People's Court," or think that the standard deviation is a criminal offense in six states, then you need The Cartoon Guide to Statistics to put you on the road to statistical literacy.

The Cartoon Guide to Statistics covers all the central ideas of modern statistics: the summary and display of data, probability in gambling and medicine, random variables, Bernoulli Trails, the Central Limit Theorem, hypothesis testing, confidence interval estimation, and much more—all explained in simple, clear, and yes, funny illustrations. Never again will you order the Poisson Distribution in a French restaurant!

This updated version features all new material.

Customers who viewed this item also viewed

Page 1 of 1 Start overPage 1 of 1

Charles Wheelan
1,523
Kindle Edition
$10.35
Larry Gonick
215
Kindle Edition
$10.99
Yoram Bauman Ph.D.
214
Kindle Edition
$11.99
Larry Gonick
428
Kindle Edition
1 offer from $5.00
Larry Gonick
109
Kindle Edition
$12.99
Michael F. Patton
188
Kindle Edition
$12.74

Customers who bought this item also bought

Page 1 of 1 Start overPage 1 of 1

Larry Gonick
215
Kindle Edition
$10.99
Larry Gonick
428
Kindle Edition
1 offer from $5.00
Larry Gonick
109
Kindle Edition
$12.99
Yoram Bauman Ph.D.
214
Kindle Edition
$11.99
Ph.D. Bauman, Yoram
24
Kindle Edition
$12.99
Jason D. Mycoff
21
Kindle Edition
$31.36

Amazon Business : For business-only pricing, quantity discounts and FREE Shipping. Register a free business account

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Gonick is one of a kind." -- --Discover

"Gonick is one of a kind." -- Discover

"Gonick is so consistently witty and clever that the reader is barely aware of being given a thorough grounding." -- --Omni

"Gonick is so consistently witty and clever that the reader is barely aware of being given a thorough grounding." -- Omni --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From the Back Cover

If you have ever looked for P-values by shopping at P mart, tried to watch the Bernoulli Trials on People's Court, or think that the standard deviation is a criminal offense in six states, then you need The Cartoon Guide to Statistics to put you on the road to statistical literacy.

The Cartoon Guide to Statistics covers all the central ideas of modern statistics: the summary and display of all data, probability in gambling and medicine, random variables, Bernoulli Trials, the Central Limit Theorem, hypothesis testing, confidence interval estimation, and much more--all explained in simple, clear, and funny illustrations. Never again will you order the Poisson Distribution in a French restaurant! --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

ASIN : B00SRYUW5O
Publisher : William Morrow Paperbacks; Illustrated edition (February 10, 2015)
Publication date : February 10, 2015
Language : English
File size : 95118 KB
Text-to-Speech : Not enabled
Enhanced typesetting : Not Enabled
X-Ray : Not Enabled
Word Wise : Not Enabled
Print length : 230 pages
Lending : Not Enabled

Best Sellers Rank: #205,180 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #21 in Mathematics Study & Teaching (Kindle Store)
- #45 in Statistics Economics
- #81 in Probability & Statistics (Kindle Store)

Customer Reviews:
526 ratings

Customer reviews

5 star		63%
4 star		18%
3 star		9%
2 star		5%
1 star		5%

How are ratings calculated?

Top reviews from the United States

There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.

RMF

Only 1/3 of the book is useful, the other 2/3 has more complex stuff that are not well explained through the cartoons.

Reviewed in the United States on November 23, 2017

Verified Purchase

If you had college level statistics this book could serve as a half decent refresher.

But if you are like me and only have basic high school stat-related stuff (basic probability etc), the book becomes frustrating at less than half its lenght because the formulas and concepts start to become more complex are not explained well enough via cartoonish style. The book then becomes annoying and irritating because one formula/concept piles on top of the previous one and from there it is all downhill, at which point I just gave up and will appeal to a more rigorous book which takes its time to explain carefully each point.

23 people found this helpful

Helpful

Jodi C. Beck

Okay overview of the very basics

Reviewed in the United States on July 15, 2020

Verified Purchase

I already have a good knowledge of statistics but got this to as a general reference, since it is more succinct than many other stats books.

For actually learning, I think this book is good if you struggle with basic concepts like standard deviations, z-scores and dice roll probabilities. If you are taking your first stats class in college, this book by itself would maybe get you to a B (depending on the teacher). The material ends at linear regression, and doesn't say much more about it that isn't obvious, so I don't think this will teach you any techniques that would actually be useful in the real world. It will however give you part of a foundation for learning those.

I think the book falls into the common trap of similar books that try to make complicated concepts accessible. It spends way too much time overexplaining the easy parts of the subject, which is probably already not hard for most people. The middling material is not given as much attention, so is not that much easier. However I feel that stats textbooks often have a particularly bad habit of overcomplicating simple things, so relative to those this one is quite good. It will only put you to sleep a little bit. When you get to the hardest parts of the subject, the whole accessibility begins to fall apart in the face of irreducible complexity, and the veneer of simplification actually makes it harder to understand. This one ends with regression, and I found that chapter confusing despite already knowing regression. Although then again, most other stats books are even worse. However, usually when I'm looking for a simplified description of a subject, I'm interested in the simplification of the hard parts. I figure that if I need a simplified version for the easy parts, the harder parts will be hopeless anyway, so the problem is that I lack some important foundation rather than how the material is explained. Maybe the assumption is that most people never finish the book so its better if the early chapters are done best, but the early chapters of this would cover maybe your first midterm. And usually that is not the one you need help with.

Ordinarily I love concrete examples and vignettes for explaining stats because I think it's not really a complicated subject, it's just easy to get lost when you don't have the right intuition. However the cartoons and stories in this book don't really add much, they have a lot of filler that just tells a story to tell a story, and doesn't actually help explain the concept at hand. Maybe if the material was new to me they would help ward off boredom. The humor is pretty dated but to the point of being quaint, so I can't really fault it, having indeed been amused if not in the intended way. It might have been better to include humor *about* statistics, rather than barely relevant jokes that sort of tangentially reference statistics.

Statistics is the kind of subject where just learning 10% of it gives you some useful tools for understanding a few common real-world situations (including those studied by other subjects) and learning about 30% will equip you to deal with most situations you face when not deliberately looking for tough problems, ie. doing statistics research. This book gives you about 5% which is to say it teaches you enough to solve toy problems, but falls short of teaching you to apply it to real ones. For example it teaches the t-test for comparing normally distributed variables, which is indeed a very useful test. But often variables are not actually normal. There's usually some tricks you can do to fix that (eg. taking the log), but the book doesn't go into it. Or it doesn't cover the chi-square test, which is closely related and arguably comes up more often in life (and almost as often in stats exams).

As I said, if you read this book very carefully it will give you okay understanding. If you want a good understanding the best thing is probably to find someone to show it to you with realistic examples. As far as learning from books, I would consider this one a warm up before you start on the real thing.

4 people found this helpful

Helpful

Reviewer

18 year old didn't like it

Reviewed in the United States on July 11, 2018

Verified Purchase

Bought this for my 18 year old daughter. She didn't find the content particularly helpful. But she also found the author/illustrator "cringy." On the back of our edition it advertised other books by Larry Gonick, one of which was an illustrated sex guide which reminded me of Mad Magazine style cartooning. She refused to be seen carrying a book with this image on its back cover by "some cringy old perv from the 60's." I was looking for an alternative and perhaps fun way to supplement her statistics class, but this was not it.

11 people found this helpful

Helpful

Well distributed humor, Sherlock

Reviewed in the United States on February 16, 2019

Verified Purchase

Hypothesis: there is a chance that this is the first statistics book that you (Sherlock?) will read from cover-to-cover. Why? The distribution of humor looks good. Meaning that humor is well distributed throughout this book; highly biased towards good jokes, you may find some lame-ish stuff, though. The confidence interval for “good jokes” depends on your erudition/personality, Sherlock. We can use “paired comparisons” between this book and other textbooks as well. But I will leave it as an exercise for the reader who dared to read other statistics books. One thing is certain, Larry has been getting better over time. This book was published in 1993 and a few weeks ago I read his book on Calculus published in 2011. To conclude he has evolved exponentially as a cartoonist and teacher.

6 people found this helpful

Helpful

Anand Mandapati

My go to probability & statistics refresher

Reviewed in the United States on January 15, 2019

Verified Purchase

This book has been my go to refresher on probability and statistics for many years now whenever I need to remember something. It is a very simple and fun introduction to many concepts that are important to our every day lives. Yet, it also gets fairly in depth into statistical concepts. The reason I gave he book 4 stars instead of 5 though is that there are places where even the cartoons jump a little too fast for my speed and I need to refer to other resources to fully understand the concept. But, I’ve yet to find a simpler, more accessible statistics book.

5 people found this helpful

Helpful

Bob

Better than my college textbooks.

Reviewed in the United States on September 1, 2020

Verified Purchase

Ok, "Better than my college textbooks" isn't that difficult; but, it's important to know. I used this book in school, and constantly use it (and recommend it) at work.
If you're confused by statistics, or even if you're not; this book explains in a few pages what other books spend 50 pages on. And, it explains it more clearly.

Given its low price, and incredibly useful content, I'd say this is a "must" for just about everyone. If you ever go to the casino, buy a lottery ticket, or do anything else with an element of risk, this is a worthwhile read.

Oh, and if you're going to take a statistics class, reading this book *before* the first class is highly recommended.

2 people found this helpful

Helpful

Raki

KINDLE NEEDS TO STEP UP THE GAME FOR PC'S

Reviewed in the United States on July 31, 2017

Verified Purchase

This book is terrible on kindle. You can not enlarge it, you can barely see the words. Worst money ever spent. I can't say if the book is any good BECAUSE I CANT SEE IT

11 people found this helpful

Helpful

Top reviews from other countries

Amazon Customer

Very disappointing

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on October 20, 2020

Verified Purchase

This book was a huge disappointment. I was hoping that the author would use the cartoons to aid the explanations of statistics, but unfortunately this is not the case. The words have been written by a statistician and then a cartoonist who does not understand statistics has read the words and drawn some cartoons in response. As a result, many of the cartoons simply communicate how confusing the explanations are, I have attached some pics as examples. The explanations are not easy to understand and are ironically not aimed at an audience that is new to statistics. There is a lot of assumed knowledge. So, this book is not recommended if you do not already understand statistics. If, however, you understand statistics well and you fancy having a laugh at a cartoonist who (like me) does not understand statistics then by all means give this a read

2 people found this helpful

Marshall Lord

Amusing way to learn stats, but don't expect it to be too easy.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on July 28, 2008

Verified Purchase

I got hold of this book because I was looking for a textbook I could recommend to colleauges who needed to boost their stats knowledge but who were definately not expert statisticians. I thought that the more amusing presentation might hold the interest of non-mathematicians better than most textbooks.

It's aimed at the kind of reader who needs to use statistics but has the attitude to them which one of my colleagues at an Economics department meeting at University once parodied by saying of the title of a stats course, "That'll sound to most students like 'Come and stick your hand in a bowl of piranha fish!'"

Well, this book does cover the material in an entertaining way, and the cartoons are both relevant and amusing.

But don't imagine that this will make statistics easy. It's a reasonably good presentation of the principles of statistical analysis, put together in a humorous way. My colleagues did find it easier to pick up and read. In that sense I would guardedly describe this as a success and I'd give it four stars.

While the book does make it easier to make the effort to apply yourself to the subject, it does not magically eliminate any requirement for that intellectual effort and never could have.

In fact, if you are looking for an applied statistics or Econometrics textbook which expresses the equations and what you need to do clearly and in relatively simple language, I have read one or two - Yeomans "Studies in Applied Statistics" or Maddala's "Econometrics" spring to mind - which are easier to follow.

My main minor irritation with this book is that it is printed in a font which looks like handwriting, presumably to match the cartoons, and I find this slightly harder to read than standard typescript.

Nevertheless, it's entertaining, the stats is sound, and if you want to a stats textbook for someone who would have difficulty making themselves even pick up the average maths book, never mind read it, this may be what you're looking for.

10 people found this helpful

Amazon Customer

Innovative but not a 101 version

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on October 11, 2020

Verified Purchase

Great way to present the topic but wasn't beginner's enough introduction for me. Recommend for someone who already knows the topics and just needs a refresher but don't recommend for someone who's new to the subject area like myself.

AndyWicks

Excellent!

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on January 20, 2019

Verified Purchase

This is aimed at those who feel less comfortable with maths/stats. The explanations are clear and the humour is gentle. These are not features normally associated with a statistics textbook. I have already had several people want to "borrow" it.

joseph

Very good

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on February 12, 2016

Verified Purchase

A very good book - you will still have to stop and think about things but it is presented in a non-threatening manner. I wish it was thicker and explained things in more detail but I like it. It's like reading a comic book.

See all reviews

What other items do customers buy after viewing this item?

Page 1 of 1 Start overPage 1 of 1

Charles Wheelan
1,523
Kindle Edition
$10.35
Larry Gonick
215
Kindle Edition
$10.99
Yoram Bauman Ph.D.
214
Kindle Edition
$11.99
Will Kurt
262
Kindle Edition
$17.99

Cartoon Guide to Statistics Illustrated Edition, Kindle Edition

Buy for others

Buying and sending eBooks to others

Customers who viewed this item also viewed

Customers who bought this item also bought

Editorial Reviews

Review

From the Back Cover

About the Author

Product details

Customer reviews

Top reviews from the United States

There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.

Top reviews from other countries

What other items do customers buy after viewing this item?