Cengage Advantage Books: Basic Statistics: Tales of Distributions

By Chris Spatz

Book Overview

This ''friendly,'' accessible textbook emphasizes the analysis of empirical data, which helps students learn to select proper statistical analyses for problems, explain why an analysis is appropriate,... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0495909688
• ISBN13: 9780495909682
• Release Date: January 2010
• Publisher: Cengage Learning
• Length: 512 Pages
• Weight: 1.70 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.3" x 0.8" x 7.5"

Customer Reviews

Fantastic

I am not a math person, but this book is great! This book is very easy to read and will make your job much easier for class.

SPATZ: BASIC STATISTICS, 8th EDN. "Tales of Distributions"

I have taught a psychological statistics course seven times since 1995 with this book: five times with the Fifth Edition (blue cover), and twice with the Eighth Edition (red cover). I selected it over many other competing editions because of the clarity and informality of Spatz' writing style.Students enter the course feeling high anxiety, but most of them enjoy the book and keep it rather than reselling it. The book has a good balance between the technical details and historical anecdotes. A study guide is available, but not needed. As with other college textbooks, the publisher puts out new editions every three years, but the changes between editions are very minimal.. As a professor, I would be unable to justify rolling into a next edition; I change editions on the stat book about once every ten year. CRITICISMS OF THE BOOK: (1) The author supplies an Inbstructor's Test Bank, but the multiple-choice questions in it are terrible. Most of the m-c items have combination answers ("Both A and B" or "All of the above." The combination answers bring in all the shortcomings of true-false questions. The majority of the m-c items are completely unusable ---- I write my own, instead. Am amazed that the m-c items, with all their deficiencies, are rolled forward into each new edition, unchanged. (2) A second criticism is that the homework problems at the end of each chapter are very time-consuuming to complete . For many chapters, it took me 4-6 hours to complete the exerecises; and I am the professor who already _knows_ the subject! The homework exercises take so long to do, not because they teach statistics so well, but rather because they include very large data-sets to which the statistical formulas must be applied. My philosophy is to keep data sets BRIEF, on the theory that, if the student can apply the formulas correctly to ten data-points, they can also do it to a larger data-set. On the first day of class, I now give students a two-page handout listing specific homework exercises, chapter-by-chapter, that can be skipped. This minimizes student's agony. (3) I skip coverage of two of the three chapters on ANOVA - analysis of variance. I do teach the basic one-way ANOVA chapter, but not factorial ANOVA or the within-subjects ANOVA . Skipping two chapters is justified because at UNM, basic statistics is merely a three-credit class, while at many other colleges four credits are earned. Still, despite these three shortcomings, I will continue to use Spatz 8/e as my textbook. Prof. Stephen Buggie, Psycghology, Univ. of New Mexico, Gallup NM 87301

Excellent Guide

This book proved a major turning point for me as an undergrad who didn't know what she wanted to be when she grew up! This book was inspiring and informative... even funny... statistics became tangible, interesting and fun. The author does an amazing job. I still use this book professionally when I need to brush up on stats analysis.

A student-friendly book to help you succeed in statistics!

Tales of Distribution is fun, well written and easy to read. Tales of Distribution is a college textbook worth reading if you need to put statistics at your command! Spats'z style is helpful to the reader and down to earth. This is a heavy-duty treatment of the topic; however, interesting examples of how to use statistics in day-to-day life makes this topic come alive. If you read this book, you will never be intimidated by statistics in your lifetime. The author's discussion of "Rationale of ANOVA" and "Hypothesis Testing" is excellent. Frequent use of algebraic explanation is joined with graphic explanations to help the reader visualize the author's points. "Work Problems" at the end of each chapter show imagination and creativity. The author seems to have a sincere desire to help the reader at every turn along their journey of statistical discovery. The author also seems to have privilege insight into the reader's mind. He anticipates what the reader is thinking, and serves up a helping of practical advice at the exact perfect moment. As a market-research practitioner, I found the book to be very refreshing and enjoyable to read. I read it on my summer vacation! My daughter purchased the book as the required text for her statistics class at UCLA. At the end of her class she had planned to sell the book back to the UCLA bookstore. After looking at the book for 60 seconds, I said to her "No, don't sell this book. This is great book. Keep it." To which she replied; "But Dad, I need the money. You can keep it if you pay me for it." To which I replied; "Haven't I paid for this book once already? If I pay you for it now, that would be the second time I bought the same book."