Chances Are: The Only Statistics Book You'll Ever Need

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Summary: Chances Are by Steve Slavin
Review: After using this book as a self teaching refresher course, I can't imagine why I had such a hard time with Statistics in college. The book is layed out in a logical progressive fashion so that each chapter provides the basis for the next one. The exercises that you perform are straight forward and very helpful in clearing up any questions you may have at the end of each section. By doing the problems successfully you learn what you have read. I highly recommend this book to anybody who is currently taking Statistics or for those who simply would like a refresher course.

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Summary: Watch out for math errors
Review: As an adult long past math class, I am attempting to home school myself on statistics. This book has been reasonably simple to understand, but I am finding random math errors that make the learning process FAR more difficult. Particularly in the 6th chapter on percentiles, I have encountered three errors - looks like a poor editorial review job. The subject is difficult enough, without having to figure out the author or publisher has made mistakes. If anyone knows how I can reach Mr. Slavin by email, I'd appreciate you posting a review here. Thank you.

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Summary: A Excellent Reference to Statistics
Review: Ecomonics Computers and News you have to know how to crunch numbers and this book shows you how but you have to know you Algerbra and it is stated that most of students in statistics classes don't know the math.But this book is the Only Statistics book you'll ever need it aint for beginners but it's a good book to have as a Reference and keeps you from getting rusty and it will help you at your job and the best at teaching you how to crunch numbers on your own

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Summary: Just what I needed....
Review: I am an adult college student in an independent degree program. One of my required courses was Statistics. Not having done math in many years, I found it extremely difficult to learn from the standard textbooks available on the subject. This book made learning (and understanding) statistics a snap. The only drawback I found were several typographical errors within the mathematical problems, causing my own calculations to differ from the ones in the book, something that at times was frustrating for a person trying to learn and working out every problem step by step. All in all though, I would highly recommend this book for a person with little or no mathematical experience to learn the art of statistics.

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Summary: Not for anyone needing to do statistical analysis
Review: Nicely presented for the basic intro into statistics; mean, mode, probability, rates, basic graphs and charts, what a standard deviation is, what is correlation and regression ,etc. However, nothing on what statistical tests to perform when you have data to analyse, such as a student-t test, Chi Square, Mann-Whitney Test, or power analysis.

I bought this book thinking it would nicely outline statistical tests one would use and explain when to use the proper test. It doesn't mention any statistical analysis.

A very good book to review what would probably be in chapter 1 of any stats book plus correlation and regression. These are important concepts which need to be understood before one could think with statistics but certainly not "The Only Statistics Book You'd Ever Need."

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Summary: So, what are the chances?
Review: So what are the chances that this really is the only Statistics book you'll ever need? Depends on who you are.

If you are an adult who's been out of school for a while and never took a course in statistics and won't be needing to take one in the foreseeable future this really is the only book you'll probably ever need. It starts off explaing basic arithmetic and moves to decimals,percents and eases into the basics of statistics.

If you're a college student who hasn't taken any statistics classes before but will be soon this is a good primer. It will give you the necessary basics to remove any stumbling blocks during those first weeks of classes but you will move beyond the scope of this book quickly.

If you've already taken some statistics courses this is not the book for you. This book is not meant for someone with any background already, it will be far too basic.

The title is accurate in that it is meant for the average person not the math professional. Should the latter be looking for a comprehensive tome on statistical analysis this isn't it.