Cartoon Guide to Statistics

List Price: $17.95 Discount Price: $9.00

Customer Reviews:

excellent.  [Posted on 2007-10-30]
this is great as a refresher and a road map of what to study in-depth.

statistics made simple through cartoons [Posted on 2008-01-24]
I wrote a short review of this book previously for Amazon and my opinions have not changed very much. However, Gonick deserves credit for coauthoring his cartoon books with experts in the field. This way he avoids mistakes and brings out the important messages that, in the case of this book, a statistician would want to teach his students.
Recently, I used the cartoons on p-values to help another statistician with a presentation on p-values for an audience of medical researchers. I found the relevant cartoons to be humorous and very instructive.

Also, I discovered that in addition to the standard topics of estimation, hypothesis testing, regression, correlation and analysis of variance, Chapter 12, simply titled "Conclusion" has a brief description of many advanced topics, particularly in multivariate analysis.

Multivariate topics include Chernoff faces, cluster analysis, factor analysis and discriminant analysis. Other advanced topics mentioned are random walks, time series analysis, image analysis and even resampling (bootstrap, jackknife and randomization).

Each is described with a single cartoon. This reminds me to again warn that these cartoons alone cannot do justice to the various topics being taught. However, careful selection and placement into the context of a course can bring home important points to students better than just conventional teaching methods. I wouldn't hesitate to use this material to supplement and liven up an introductory statistics course.

The bibliography at the end provides a number of very fine introductory texts and other topics and software that could interest the general public (also done in the cartoon fashion of Gonick).

the cartoon guide to statistics [Posted on 2008-08-19]
Not as easy to understand as I thought it would be based on the title.

Self-study? Try looking elsewhere [Posted on 2008-09-02]
Cartoons definitely make the subject of statistics seem less-intimidating. I bought this book for self-study and found it difficult to follow. Though the cartoons made me smile at times, I was unhappy with the lack of material substance. For instance, equations and topics are thrown out there with little explanation on how they were derived. On multiple occasions, I looked for supporting information that wasn't there. Ultimately, I cannot recommend Cartoon Guide to Statistics. I am, however, finding success with a more expensive book, take a look: Statistics for People Who (Think They) Hate Statistics

Advanced Math [Posted on 2008-11-24]
I cannot recommend a book more highly than this!
To overcome the boring, confusing instruction you received in college or high school about statistics you NEED this book.
Never has math been so easy.
Written with humor and the "picture is worth a thousand words" style of cartoon books, you'll get the message.
And remember 5 out of 4 people have trouble with statistics.

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