Triola: Essentials of Statistics_5 [With CDROM]

by Mario F. Triola

Book Overview

For courses in Introductory Statistics. Real data bring statistics to life From opinion polls and clinical trials to self-driving cars, statistics influences and shapes the world around us.... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0321924592
• ISBN13: 9780321924599
• Release Date: January 2014
• Publisher: Pearson
• Length: 670 Pages
• Weight: 3.04 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 8.6" x 10.8"

Customer Reviews

awesome

Got here before any other books I had ordered. The product description was spot on Good Condition Cheap My teacher is kind of a prick though.

Stats

The text is easy to understand, but I don't recommend taking this book on with out a professor handy. The formulas can be a little daunting. In reality they are not, but you won't know this until the professor explains. I just made it through two weeks of intense statistics and made an A. I recommend this book.

Essentials of Statistics by Mario F. Triola

Triola has a great way of teaching a difficult subject. Real life examples and a sense of humor are used to make it interesting and engaging for the beginner.

Excellent Statistics Textbook

For any professor that is looking to select a great intro statistics textbook, look no further. This is very easy to read and understand, even for the most extreme math/stat phobes. It is well organized and provides valuable references and tables in the appendices. The author, Mario Triola, does a wonderful job of exerting his enthusiasm for statistics into the text and relating the material to every day subjects. For instance, when describing time-series graphs the author uses data of declining numbers of drive-in movie theatres. You actually get a feel for his personality which is odd for a textbook author. He also writes of the various developments in statistics in a historical context, which helps the reader to remember and understand the importance of the subject matter. I actually enjoyed reading this textbook and would recommend it to anyone looking for a great learning tool for the class.

Clear and well-organized, but compromised

Triola's book is, for the most part, an excellent choice for an intro stats course. As an instructor, I find it relatively easy to work with, and the included STATDISK gives students many opportunities to analyze large sets of data without having to enter hundreds of values into calculators or computers. It also contains a lot of examples taken from actual data sets; this is the text that will deflect that ubiquitous "what's this useful for in real life" question from students. A few issues, though, dog the book. In order of importance: 1 - Chapter 3-6, on counting methods is either underdeveloped or overdeveloped, depending on perspective. The short section gives an everything-but-the-kitchen-sink survey of the topic - permutations and combinations and such are dealt with in one fell swoop and followed up with only a smattering of problems, giving students little oportunity to fully digest the most mathematically-intense part of the course. If you're teaching this course to math majors, you'll need additional time and material for this section (I recommend Sullivan and Mizrahi's _Finite Mathematics_); if you're teaching humanities/social science majors, who are more concerned with data collecting and analysis, I'd recommend skipping this chapter entirely. 2 - The book makes such frequent references to the TI-83+ calculator that one is inclined to wonder if Triola is receiving kickbacks from Texas Instruments. Contrary to what the book would have you believe, it's not necessary to invest in this beast (retail price: >$100) in order to compute standard deviations and correlation coefficients; my students are managing just fine with their $15 calculators with statistical functions. <br /> <br />3 - In Chapter 4, there's some mention of the principle that if, under certain assumptions, the probability of an *observed event* is very low, then the assumptions are probably incorrect. There's some merit to that, to be sure (if all 1000 of my coin flips came up heads, it's natural to question the original assumption that my coin was fair), but Triola would do well to apply the critical thinking procedures exalted in Chapter 1 to elaborate on this. For instance: it's highly unlikely that Betty Terwilliger would have won the jackpot in the Lotto 6-49 if the contest wasn't rigged (probability: 1/14000000 or thereabouts), and yet, she did. (Similar arguments can be - and have been - used to defend intelligent design and astrology.) It's a subtle concept, one that deserves more attention than the cursory "this is the law, and it's important" treatment that Triola gives it. <br /> <br />4 - Some of the later chapters (Chapter 7 in particular) complicate matters unnecessarily. Chapter 7 expands on ideas presented in Chapter 5 and developed in Chapter 6; these connections are not exploited as much as they could be. <br /> <br />These flaws aside, _Essentials_ is a sound survey of the subject, one that's very nicely designed with its audience of humanities