Mind on Statistics (with CD-ROM)

Rating:
Summary: Unclear
Review: I used this book for a Stats 350 course at my university and I had already had statistics once but due to a conflict in transfer credits, I had to take it again. I found this book was not helpful at all and actually confused me on stuff I already knew. It doesn't give you the opportunity to really test your knowledge the way some other texts do. I do not recommend this book at all.

Rating:
Summary: An Insult
Review: Someone should have told the authors that simple concepts don't need to be elaborated. Insulting a student's intelligence in no way helps him to learn.

Rating:
Summary: vague and unorganized
Review: The statistics department of my university recommeded this book for professors to teach out of since one of the authors is a lecturer there, but since then, some of the professors have stopped using this book and moved on to better ones. This book is a terrible text book, in the sense that desciptions are very short, examples are unrepresentative of the concept, and concepts are not presented in an organized fashion. The book also lacks minor things like solutions to problems included within the text of the chapter. I had taken AP stats in High school before and the book I used then was a lot easier to understand and follow. In fact, some of the professors at the university are beginning to use it.

Rating:
Summary: A textbook not for the traditional teacher.
Review: This book has a case study approach to presenting statistics.
As a teacher I really liked the order in which the chapters are presented. Two innovations I appreciated are the introduction to hypothesis testing using proportions rather than means, and the treatment of qualitative variables.

Some of the innovations, however, may catch the reader off guard. For example, contingency tables together with p-values are discussed in chapter 6, while hypothesis testing is introduced in chapter 11. Another example, ANOVA methods are discussed but the F-table is missing.

This book is also weak in the presentation of basic concepts.
There are few examples worked out, and there are even fewer exercises that ask students to actually do any manipulation or solving. In the probability section I found that the 28th problem of the chapter to be the first that required any serious application of mathematics.

If you are the person who likes problems that require discussion then this is your book, but if you like exercises that require mathematics consider another text.