Cartoon Guide to Statistics

Features

• Cover Type: Paperback with 230 pages
• Published by: Collins
• Edition: 1st Edition July 14, 1993
• Written in: English
• ISBN 10 Number: 0062731025
• ISBN 13 Number: 978-0062731029
• Book Dimensions: 9.1 x 7.2 x 0.8 inches
• Weighs: 11.2 ounces

Product Review
"Gonick is one of a kind." -- --Discover

"Gonick is one of a kind." -- Discover

"Gonick is so consistently witty and clever that the reader is barely aware of being given a thorough grounding." -- --Omni

"Gonick is so consistently witty and clever that the reader is barely aware of being given a thorough grounding." -- Omni

Product Description
If you have ever looked for P-values by shopping at P mart, tried to watch the Bernoulli Trails on "People's Court," or think that the standard deviation is a criminal offense in six states, then you need The Cartoon Guide to Statistics to put you on the road to statistical literacy.

The Cartoon Guide to Statistics covers all the central ideas of modern statistics: the summary and display of data, probability in gambling and medicine, random variables, Bernoulli Trails, the Central Limit Theorem, hypothesis testing, confidence interval estimation, and much more--all explained in simple, clear, and yes, funny illustrations. Never again will you order the Poisson Distribution in a French restaurant!

Reader Reviews
This book is a good introductory level look at Statistics. The authors cover what the subject of Statistics is, the history of Statistics, some of the theories and terms, and also shows some applications of the subject. The weakness of the book is that there are a lot of formulas given and not enough discussion of how those formulas are derived, so one would need to use other statistics texts to supplement the material. Thus this book cannot stand alone. On the other hand, if one is just trying to get an overview of the subject, then there is a lot to skip over. The authors do make a humorous presentation of the material, so those that are looking for an overview may find this a more enjoyable introduction to the subject. There is also a lot to do with Statistics that the book does not mention. It does cover probabilities, but when it comes to distributions it focuses only on Standard Normal distributions. I don't believe it ever mentions Uniform, Poisson, or other types of distributions which most Statistics courses cover. The best part of the book is the examples, some of which are carried through for several chapters to help the reader better understand the subject. Although, even with the examples they are a bit inconsistent in their presentation. For example, in one case they started to discuss the use of statistics to compare the salaries of male and female employees in the same job, but they never complete the discussion. The examples of racial bias in jury selection, and the gas mileage comparison of two different types of gas are much more complete. This is a decent book, but not up to the level of Gonick's excellent "Cartoon History of the Universe" series, and not strong enough to give it more than three stars.