The Basic Practice of Statistics- Third Edition Description:

The Basic Practice of Statistics, Third Edition review:
1 stars (A jumble of deviations) - This book was poorly planned. To a student learning statistics, this book can be very confusing. Contrary to traditional textbooks with a review problems section at the end of each chapter, the problems in this book are intermingled throughout the chapter! Therefore meat of this book - explanations of concepts - gets disbursed over many pages. This makes it difficult to outline the important concepts for reviewing. Margins and empty spaces are cluttered with irrelevant photography and trivia, making it difficult to concentrate. Another annoyance is that the author stuffs "cursory information" that doesn't apply until later chapters. A person trying to grasp the main points is suddenly confronted with an incomplete and unfinished idea followed by a tiny footnote saying "you can skip this page until Chapter 22." It would be a great help if the author included more graphs and pictorial representations so that the reader can visualize the concepts. If this book is required for a class, you should get the most from the professor's lecture or else you're in serious trouble!
4 stars (A Decent Primer for Statistics) - Before you use this book, make sure you understand the author's purpose: "Although the book is elementary in the level of mathematics required and in the statistical procedures presented, it aims to give students both an understanding of the main ideas of statistics and useful skills for working with data" (Preface, pp xiv-xv). The key point here is "elementary in the level of mathematics required." Essentially, this is a math-lite version of statistics. With that in mind, the author did a decent job of passing on a working knowledge of statistics (I'll bet all the math in the book could fit on one 5x8 card). Also, the book has TONS of examples. I'd say that at least half of the text is just the author working through real-world examples. So, if you have trouble understanding the statistical concepts the author is trying to get across, there's sure to be plenty of examples immediately following his explanation to help you work things out.



To add a bit more information to the raw data of these reviews, I've mapped the universe of all possible readers of this book onto a set of x-y axes. Let the x-axis run from "non-Math-types" up through "Math-types." Let they y-axis go from "non-geniuses" up through "geniuses:"



- Quadrant I: genius Math-types might as well not even pick this book up. There's almost no math here, nothing is proven, and the example-to-meat ratio is darn near infinite.



- Quadrant II: genius non-Math-types, like the Quadrant Is, should also skip this book. The application focus will please them, but that example-to-meat ratio I mentioned above will bore them to tears.



- Quadrant III: non-genius non-Math-types (i.e., "normal" people). Normally, I consider this one group. However, this book is probably at too simple a level for most of them. The book essentially starts from the assumption that the reader has never used Excel or a calculator to put numbers into a table and graph them. In this day and age, most people will probably be familiar with this. However, for those who aren't, or for those looking for an easy primer in statistics, this is the book for you. Starting, essentially, from scratch, the author will move you up to an ability to understand and use statistics better than most people on the planet (nothing esoteric, just the core stuff). About the only math you need is basic Algebra.



- Quadrant IV: non-genius Math-types, like the Quadrant Is and Quadrant IIs, should probably avoid this book. There's just not enough math in it to satisfy their learning desires. Plus, since they're Math-types, they will probably already know enough math to make what's in this book redundant.



Overall, this is a decent book (I rate it 4 stars out of 5). The author did a good job matching his material to his chosen audience (a subset of Quadrant IIIs). For anyone on the "genius" or "Math" side of my coordinate system, I highly recommend they AVOID this book. For the majority of the Quadrant III ("normal") people, the lack of almost any math might make the book too simplistic. But, for those with few math skills and little background in number manipulation or graphing, this is a very good start.
1 stars (Wrong answers, Wrong book) - I bought this book because it was required textbook. But if I had a choice of selecting my own textbook, this wouldn't be it. Some of the answers on the back were wrong (after few times, you can't trust the answers or yourself any more), un-updated with newer version, and too short answers to figure out what is the explanation of the outcomes. So I turned to the CDs which came with the book, only to find that the website links are all messed up and needed an instructor's registered email to access any important stuff. --simply useless.

I am usually not very active about giving advice but in this case I had to speak out--Don't buy. I have another advise for you if you are the publisher: revise. third edition doesn't seem to be any better than 2nd.