Rating: 
Summary: THIS BOOK DOES NOT HELP
Review: Everything in this book is very unclear, with vague examples. The text is 98% Math and 2%English which makes it difficult for the students to comprehend whats going on.
Rating: 
Summary: average textbook, but sketchy in places
Review: For the most part this textbook provided a good foundation for the study of probability and statistics. Some of the examples lacked a necessary level of detail and left me wondering how they got from point A to point B (especially in the second half of the text). Of course, unless you're just buying this book for self knowledge you probably don't have a choice on whether or not to buy it.
Rating:
Summary: average textbook, but sketchy in places
Review: For the most part this textbook provided a good foundation for the study of probability and statistics. Some of the examples lacked a necessary level of detail and left me wondering how they got from point A to point B (especially in the second half of the text). Of course, unless you're just buying this book for self knowledge you probably don't have a choice on whether or not to buy it.
Rating:
Summary: I am fighting with this book
Review: I bought this book because it is our text book. At first I read it closely to understand the content. But I found it keeps confusing me by so much discussion that leads to nothing. The author seems to avoid concise and precise style of relation.
Rating: 
Summary: Not for application oriented. Better suited for math majors
Review: I disagree with others on this one. The book is perhaps a little dry for non-mathematically oriented. If you are a math major this book will work out fine.
Sometimes however, some of us who start out as math majors at the undergrad level will come to a point where we realize pure math is no longer our forte. I suppose that is when applied fields like engineering, economics or finance start looking more promising than mathematics.
This distinction is however an important one. If you are into applied fields, the emphasis is on learning what methods to use and being able to solve the equations well. Theories, proofs and analysis are often nice and may be even elegant. But most likely they are an over kill. Tools and techniques are what are going to save the day. If you find yourself in this group, this book is not an easy read. I think there are excellent alternatives for those looking for books with better examples, illustrations etc.,
I am planning to continue in math/statistics beyond college level. So far I have not found too many things to complain about this book. It does a pretty good job of explaining the theory part without attempting to skip over the hard sections. That is why I do not think it deserves the harsh ratings it has received from other readers.
The authors acknowledge that much when they say that this book is useful when used as a text for a two semester long course even for math majors.
Hope this helps. Cheers
Rating:
Summary: The WORST prob & stats book !!
Review: I feel much better after reading other reviews of this book - I am not the only one or the reason for this . This book is very deficient . . Especially for undergraduate learners .
Rating: 
Summary: a (yawn) mechanical approach to mathematics
Review: I studied the first 8 chapters of this book instead of attending the undergraduate lecture. This was a mistake. Tanis & Hoggs present probability and statistics, an otherwise interesting topic, in the most mechanical way imaginable. There is no reference (that I can recall) to any underlying mathematical ideas or questions, nor to the problems which originially prompted Poisson, Bernoulli, Gauss, etc. to inquire about the nature of "randomness" in physical events. The authors seem to suppose that their examples demonstrate such things by proxy. This book may make a decent reference for advanced students, but should not be used to teach those seeing prob & stat for the first time... that is, unless, you want it to also be their last.
Rating:
Summary: a (yawn) mechanical approach to mathematics
Review: I studied the first 8 chapters of this book instead of attending the undergraduate lecture. This was a mistake. Tanis & Hoggs present probability and statistics, an otherwise interesting topic, in the most mechanical way imaginable. There is no reference (that I can recall) to any underlying mathematical ideas or questions, nor to the problems which originially prompted Poisson, Bernoulli, Gauss, etc. to inquire about the nature of "randomness" in physical events. The authors seem to suppose that their examples demonstrate such things by proxy. This book may make a decent reference for advanced students, but should not be used to teach those seeing prob & stat for the first time... that is, unless, you want it to also be their last.
Rating:
Summary: thorough but very confusing and badly written
Review: I taught prob/stat from 99-02. The first year we used Tanis and Hogg 5th, the second 6th Edition, and the last two semesters were the current Larsen and Marx (much nicer IMO, at least on the readability and organization factor). I felt the 6th was a step backwards from the 5th in terms of organization and the 5th wasn't great for that. In fact, the 6th felt a lot more like the old 3rd edition I had when I was taking prob/stat for the very first time. In my experience, many of the flaws that other reviewers have noted are present in this book:-Confusing transitions between theorems and examples in the main text, with theorems and examples not clearly delineated from surrounding text (particularly where they end), making it hard to use the book for reference as you work problems;
-Examples that have too many steps skipped;
-Problems which are often much more difficult than the examples in the text (that said, many of the problems in T&H are quite good, which I suspect explains the longevity of it as a text, well that, simple inertia among profs who have their lectures already written, and the publisher's sales staff :). *I* could use it as a reference as it does cover a lot of topics pretty well. So what. If I'm teaching the material I *better* have a mastery over the material in the book! Student have got to be able to use it and they don't have that mastery. Bad organization simply obscures the material which, while not difficult from a straight mathematical standpoint, IS pretty difficulty conceptually IME.
Rating:
Summary: Horrible, Horrible Pedagogy
Review: I very much disagree with the review by Raghu Reddy, who gave this book much too high a rating. I am a senior mathematics major interested in math itself, not applied math such as physics, engineering, et. al.
I weep for other undergraduate students who have been assigned this text as their text, as I have for my two semester, 400-level Prob & Stats I & II courses.
The authors use terms as parts of definitions before those terms have been properly defined, leading to much confusion.
They don't use enough graphs and figures to illustrate their arguments (please remember that a picture can be worth 1000 words). The text has a poor typeface and the pages are too small making it a dense and unfriendly read.
The text seems to not have been updated since its 1977 copyright. Probability and Statistics are living fields (as opposed to, say, Calculus I's treatment of basic derivatives and integrals) and as such the texts used to instruct on these fields need to be regularly updated to reflect new insights on core concepts as well as state of the art pedagological methods. In the 21st Century the format and delivery are simply unacceptable.
The authors commit the cardinal sin of a mathematical text by giving an example -- EXAMPLE -- problem in words or mathematical notation and then supplying the answer, filling in the missing steps between notation and answer with handwaving, "obviously", "it is clear", or worse: just assuming you can make the jump.
Now, if you are a math genius and aced your way to this senior year class you might a) be able to laboriously wade your way through this dense, tear-jerking (not in a good way) text, b) already know most of the first semester stuff through intuition and outside reading, and/or c) still be a virgin. For the rest of us mere mortals please consider that we struggle through our classes, need all the help we can get, and look forward to learning until socially-retarded instructors and/or horrible texts stop us in our tracks.
A Plea To College Instructors:
Please, please, please (read those three words again!) realize we students spend one to two hours with you and the next two to twenty-three with our text. If you supply us with a text as horrible as this you are insulting us as human beings and are unconsiously whipping yourself as you wonder why we can't understand the basic issues at hand. For the love of the axiomatic systems (or the deity of your choice) pick one of the 5-star rated books here at Amazon as your text. Five stars means your students are learning and enjoying their learing.
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Regards,
Christiaan
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