www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0062731025/102-4032168-9896954
Process: A Student's Guide to Graduate School in the Sciences by Dale F. Bloom, et al Icon 29 The Closed Circle: An Interpretation of the Arabs by David Pryce-Jones Icon 30 What Color Is Your Parachute? A Practical Manual for Job-Hunters and Career-Changers (2001 Edition) by Richard Nelson Bolles Icon 31 Gnu Emacs Manual by Richard M. Learning has never been so much fun, in our 45 Standard Deviants store. Our Customers' Advice See what customers recommend in addition to, or instead of, the product on this page. A very clever effort at explaining the meaning and use of the major statistical methods through the medium of captioned cartoon drawings. 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! After attempting to skim some of the 800 page intro books in the library, I decided to give this one a try. It contains everything you need to know about introductory statistics. Some things are a little unclear, but this stems from the fact that the author's did not want to burden the reader with the derivations of the basic equations. So at the expense of some clarity, they cut out a lot of junk that you will never need, probably even if your major is statistics. So even though you may need to supplement this book with a more detailed book, and even though the cartoons are far from funny, I give this book 5 stars because it is simply the best intro that you will find. You could easily get through an introductory college course with this book alone, and its a shame more courses don't try to do that. It seems to me that those who gave this book low ratings seem to think that the book should have magically imparted its knowledge upon them with no effort on their part. Indeed, although Gonick presents the details via cartoons, that does not change the fact that "Sigma" is still "Sigma", and if you don't understand exactly what "Sigma" represents before moving on to the next concept, then you will not understand the subsequent lessons. Just because cartoons tell the tale, it doesn't mean that you will breeze through this book as you might a comic book. The individual concepts must be read and reread and perhaps even contemplated in order to truly understand each one before moving on to the next concept. If you do not do this, then, of course, nothing will make sense. Nevertheless, this book is far clearer and much more fun to read than any other stat book I've opened before. Larry has a great sense of humor and is a creative genius. Zev Saftlas, Author of Motivation That Works: How to Get Motivated and Stay Motivated Was this review helpful to you? Yes No 7 of 8 people found the following review helpful: 5 out of 5 stars Book Got Me Through College, June 24, 2003 Reviewer: A reader from Los Angeles, CA United States I am math phobic and taking Statistics in college made me wonder if I was one of those people who "wasn't cut-out for college". But I got this book and it made statistics fun and a lot less intimidating. After college, an interviewer asked me about Bayes Theorum and I immediately pictured the illustration from the book! Recently, while studying for the GMAT, I recalled the fun lessons from the book - especially probability and nailed that section of the test. This would be great for High School or college students or ANYONE who is intimidated by math or stats. Relying more on images rather than formulas, the authors manage to include all of the necessary statistics formulas without appearing to do so. The cartoons are very well drawn, with some very humorous situations being described. In terms of a positive combination of explaining statistics in a non-threatening way, it is the best that I have seen. I am teaching basic statistics for the first time in fifteen years this summer, and I will recommend it to any student who is having difficulty. In addition, it is a wonderful "Cliff's Notes" guide for those taking there first stats class. Customers who bought titles by Larry Gonick also bought titles by these authors: * 86 Lloyd R. Jaisingh * 87 Darrell Huff * 88 Deborah Rumsey * 89 David H.
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