Introduction to the Practice of Statistics w/CD-ROM
by David S. Moore, George P. McCabe
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Book Summary Information
Author: David S. Moore, George P. McCabeEdition: Hardcover
Published: 2005-02-01
ISBN: 0716764008
Number of pages: 896
Publisher: W. H. Freeman
Book Reviews of Introduction to the Practice of Statistics w/CD-ROM
Book Review: Why is this book so popular?
Summary: 1 Stars
I never understood why this textbook is so popular. It is basically a catalog of formulas with endless exposition thrown in between. I understand that this book was not meant to be mathematical, but I cannot comprehend why anyone would enjoy being given a completely arbitrary formula without any sort of justification whatsoever -- mathematical or otherwise. I'm not talking about long and involved derivations that would require calculus (as, admittedly, many results in statistics do) -- I'm talking about simple derivations that middle-schoolers could understand that would clarify concepts that have traditionally confused students. Instead of having students parrot the precise statement for interpreting r^2, why not show them where this interpretation comes from and let them frame the statement as they understand it? Instead of pulling out your hairs every time students write "There is a 95% probability..." when trying to interpret a confidence interval, why not show them how probability fits into the theory of confidence intervals and use a little algebra to show why this interpretation is wrong (from a frequentist perspective, anyway)? These are all derivations that anyone who has taken algebra should be able to follow, and if this is too much math for the students, maybe it wouldn't be such a bad idea to have them review how to square numbers and solve inequalities.
The book instead substitutes mathematics with prose -- a lot of it. What might have been explained with a single mathematical argument instead takes several pages to explain. I found this book to be basically unreadable because of the excessive exposition, and I am impressed that there are high school students who liked this book (which, I would assume, implies that they actually read it). The multiple regression chapter was especially insufferable. Nowhere does it actually explain how to select variables for a multiple regression; instead it spends several pages of text explaining what multiple regression is. After reading the chapter, I probably knew about as much as I did before I read the chapter, and I still didn't know how to do a multiple regression.
I might be able to the overlook the above shortcomings of this book if only the problems were interesting, but the authors have somehow managed to choose the most uninteresting data sets possible. Whereas most statistics textbooks select data from actual experiments and studies, it seems that these authors merely fabricated a bunch of numbers to serve as data sets for some of the exercises.
I cannot recommend IPS as a textbook for any statistics class at any level. By replacing math with prose, it has only rendered statistics more convoluted. Get a statistics textbook that does just enough math to enlighten the theory (but not too much), and that has interesting and meaningful data sets to boot.
Summary of Introduction to the Practice of Statistics w/CD-ROM
With its focus on data analysis, statistical reasoning, and the way statisticians actually work, Introduction to the Practice of Statistics (IPS) helped bring the power of critical thinking and practical applications to today's statistics classroom. Unlike more traditional “plug and chug” /formula driven texts, IPS de-emphasizes probability and gives students a deeper understanding of statistics.
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