Statistics

by Martin Sternstein

Designed to be used in introductory college-level courses, either as a main or supplementaty text, this college review guide cover such topics as descriptive statistics, probability, distributions,... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0812093119
• ISBN13: 9780812093117
• Release Date: August 1996
• Publisher: Barrons Educational Series
• Length: 320 Pages
• Weight: 0.95 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 6.0" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

Core statistics without long and winding explanations

I can highly recommend this book if you study statistics. It gives a thorough review of all the core concepts without any unnecessary explanations. Don't waste your time on way too long books - go straight to the essential stuff right away!

Invaluable if you get in a bind

This isn't a book to learn statistics from. This is for someone who needs to brush up for a new class or an exam. I used it when I had an engineering course that expected a much stronger background in statistics than I had, and I found it to be a very handy reference material. If you want to start from square one and learn statistics, there are other books for that. Yes, the book sometimes skimps on the derivation and explanation, but it is supposed to be an easy review-type book, not a comprehensive textbook. I'm glad the authors kept the size down and got to the heart of making the reader functional in stastics. What is key to the usefulness of this book is the worked examples. Some texts give you theory and expect you to apply it on your own. The author of this book always provides a worked example, so you know how to go out and apply this material on your own. There are some errors in the answers to the problems, which I hope will be fixed in the next edition.

Beats any university textbook around

This book is pitched at university level study and covers the mathematics in an easy to understand manner. I have completed university level statistics however, the assigned textbook was dry and difficult to understand. I did do well in the subject, however this was by rote learning past exams rather than any deep understanding of the material. This book changes everything and I only wish I had it when I did my maths course!The book is written in a very clear style. All theory is accompanied by fully worked examples. There are plenty of graphs and explanations to illustrate the point. At the end of each theme, there is a set of problems again with fully worked solutions. Mathematical terms are explained in clear English so that I finally know what "chi square" and "degree of freedom" actually mean.The book is not perfect. As previously mentioned, there are a number of errors in the worked solutions. However, these are quickly spotted. A lot of the time, the book just asks you to accept certain equations, without showing how they are derived. It would have been nice to have an appendix with derivations of the various formulae, so that you could look them up if you were so inclined.However, these small flaws do not detract from what is an excellent text. I'd recommend this text for anyone who needs an understanding of the fundamentals of statistics. I managed to cover a whole semester's work in about 1/10th of the time!

Revising my original review

It turns out that most of the answers in the book are correct. The first problem in chapter one is incorrect, in that the median of the set of numbers is actually zero, not one. However, the problems I had with chapter two would not have arisen had the difference between the standard deviation of the population and the standard deviation of a sample been better explained. The fact that I can even say such things is proof that I learned something. :-) I must upgrade my rating and also recommend this book. It is concise (perhaps too much at times), but it does cover a fantastic range of material.