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Introductory Statistics, 5th Edition

Introductory Statistics, 5th Edition

List Price: $93.95
Your Price: $93.95
Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Our class struggled with this one...
Review: Admittedly, statistics is a challenging subject, but if it's well taught, smart and conscientious students will grasp it. Part of teaching it well calls for a textbook that understands students' needs and abilities, and can lead them systematically from where they are to higher levels of understanding and ability. For my money, Wonnacott & Wonnacott's Introductory Statistics is a clumsy effort in this respect. There isn't enough explanation of new concepts. The graphics and layout aren't very appealing. The examples weren't that useful for our class of social science majors. And each chapter is interrupted repeatedly with practice questions, which get in the way of building on concepts and maintaining a flow. As one other suffering student remarks here, you do a lot of flipping back and forth. OK, so statistics is hard; but this text makes it more difficult than it has to be, and less interesting than it can be. I speak not just for myself: this fall I was in a graduate class of bright, able, hard-working people, and many of them were having a very rough time of it. Something's wrong pedagogically when that happens. Let me recommend an alternative text--Minium, Clarke, & Coladarci's "Elements of Statistical Reasoning," second edition. I used this text four years ago in another intro class taught by Coladarci himself. He's a very talented educator, and he got a classroom full of math-anxious students through some very challenging stuff. Don't take my word for it, though. Check out the reviews on Amazon. They're deservedly very positive. I found myself going back to that book throughout this past semester whenever I was in deep water with Wonnacott and Wonnacott. Once again it pulled me through.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: referr backward and forward
Review: I found this text book to have great examples. However, explanations were confusing from chapter to chapter.

Also, there were continuing references to tables, examples etc. that were either in the previous section/chapter or the next page/section/chapter. This is very distractive when one is trying to understand a concept.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Our class struggled with this one...
Review: I personally taught out of this text on 3 occasions and consider it to be the single best introductory statistics book ever written, period.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Why do these same reviews turn up in Wonnacott?
Review: It is very curious that the same customer reviews for the Mann Introductory Statistics textbook also appear, verbatim, on the page for Wonnacott and Wonnacott 's Introductory Statistics. What gives, Amazon? I personally haven't looked at Mann, so I am not reviewing it...only commenting on the apparent crossed wires somewhere in the Amazon database.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Excellent Introductory Text
Review: This text provides a thorough introduction to the use of mathematical statistics. Carefully reading the text and solving a reasonable number of the problems will provide one with the capability to apply statistical techniques to analyze data and draw conclusions in real applications. The book is strong on examples but light on theory. Particulary noteworhty is the inclusion of several topics (such as Monte Carlo methods and Bayesian decision theory) that typically are not covered in an introductory presentation. Also useful are the end of chapter "Final Challenges" that require the reader to have mastered the material. If one's objective is to apply statistics to draw appropriate inferences and make decisions, this text will provide the reader with the required tools.


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