Rating: 
Summary: A precious text
Review: This is a very good, very understandable book. It could (maybe should) be used as a first course in multivariate techniques. Concepts very well explained, it needs no more than a good basic course in statistics to be fully absorbed. It also includes enough matrix algebra to be self-contained.
Rating:
Summary: add it to your library
Review: this is an ideal text for advanced statistics students who would like to learn about factor analysis, canonical correlations, principal components analysis, linear discriminants, etc... you definitely need to have some background in linear algebra --reading the first few sections will not be sufficient. the examples are better than those found in mardia's book. knowing splus (matlab or similar software) will help you get through the exercises. IT'S A GOOD BOOK TO ADD TO YOU LIBRARY
Rating: 
Summary: Complicated.
Review: Why is nearly everything associated with upper division math and statistics seemingly difficult? I took a class that used this book, and some how got a B, I can't even remember half the stuff in this book. Why can't someone write a book that is simple to use, simple to understand, and a little more realistic! Don't get me wrong, I love math, I just have never sat down in a job and did a math proof. Proofs just seem to make the subject for difficult. I want to use the material in a realistic setting, maybe a real life setting?!
Rating: 
Summary: not good
Review: Your typical stat book written by a typical stat professor: dull, dry, and boring and geared towards other professors instead of people who might actually want to *learn* something. This book is a paradox: it is geared for those who want to learn about multivariate statistics, but is written for those who are very experienced with multivariate analysis, espicially mathematical applications. Why an instructor would ever assign this book is beyond me; buy and tolerate this book for class if you must. In fact, I don't know one student in my multivariate class who did not complement, supplement, and eventually supplant this text with another text, exasperated by the authors' pretentiousness and unnecessarily complex explanations.
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