Statistics for Business and Economics (with CD-ROM and InfoTrac) (Statistics for Business - Economic Description:

Statistics for Business and Economics (with CD-ROM and InfoTrac) (Statistics for Business & Economics) review:
3 stars (Not the best book on the subject and the price......) - I teach Stats 201 (Introduction to Business Statistics) and for years I used the textbook by Wiers, which I feel is the best in it's field. After numerous obsrvations by my colleagues in the department, we hope that will be going back to the previous author's book after the current stock of this one runs out.



I find this book to be confusing, and it tends to jump around a lot rather than give a structured look at the process of learning Statistics. It pays little or no attention to the use of random numbers and the terminology is confusing.



Perhaps the biggest drawback with this book is the price- almost 150 bucks for a textbook is outrageous. Buy the previous edition used- the difference is minimal, the price difference is significant. Better still- buy the book on the same subject by Wiers. Don't just take my word- compare the two....it's just my opinion.
5 stars (Best text of first year MBA) - Statistics is a mind-numbing subject. It's not easy, and not particularly exciting, either. This book doesn't exactly bring loads of fun to the subject, but it explains concepts well, provides pertinent examples, and offers plenty of useful practice problems.



The authors and publishers have paid particularly close attention to detail, ensuring, for instance, that all diagrams are on the same page as the concepts they elucidate. This may be a small thing to some, but I find it tiresome that with so many texts you are forced continually to flip back and forth from diagrams on one page to pertinent information on another.



I have a background in the Humanities and before the MBA stats course had not completed a math course since high school -- 20 years ago! (48th percentile quant GMAT!) My head was swimming after the first couple of lectures, but I sat down with this text, read it carefully, worked through ALL the problems, and received an A in the course. So far, I know of no other person that earned a full A, so the course was not a walk in the park. I believe that the one thing that differentiated me from the more capable quant jocks is that I spent plenty of quality time with the text.



If this is your textbook, you've got a good one. Use it well and good luck.



BTW, my one complaint is that the shiny paper reflects into your eyes under fluorescent lighting. Too bad almost all publishers, including this one, feel compelled to go with the glossy paper.