Introductory Statistics

Reviewed by Undupitiya Wijesiri, Professor, Southwest Minnesota State University on 6/10/15

Comprehensiveness rating: 4

This book covers all necessary content areas for an introduction to Statistics course for non-math majors. The text book provides an effective index, plenty of exercises, review questions, and practice tests.

Content Accuracy rating: 4

An overwhelming majority of the content is accurate. I found only couple of errors. The formula for finding the variance using grouped data is not consistent with the definition used. Assumptions for chi-squared tests were not mentioned.

Relevance/Longevity rating: 4

Content is up to date. It would have been better if computer software such as MINITAB or SPSS was used for the computations. This would help students learn how to interpret standard statistical outputs in practice.

Clarity rating: 4

The textbook is written with adequate clarity. Discussion on sampling distributions would have helped the flow of the content. Central limit theorem for a sample proportions is not included. I think the authors rely too much on the graphing calculator for simple algebraic calculations. Should have used the normal and t-tables to find probabilities.

Consistency rating: 4

The notation used is consistent with standard notations used in the field throughout the text. However the formula used for finding variance of grouped data is not consistent with the definition. Poor notation is used in chapter 13 in discussion of ANOVA. Students may confuse the sum of the values in each group as the standard deviation in the group since the letter s is used for the sum.

Modularity rating: 5

The text is divided into easily readable sections. Content is well organized and presented in a manner so that reading sections can be assigned throughout the course. Different sections could be reorganized easily without presenting too much interruption to the reader.

Organization/Structure/Flow rating: 5

The material is presented with a flow consistent with a standard statistic text. Sample percentiles should have been discussed before discussing the median and quartiles. Overall content is organized and structured well.

Interface rating: 5

I do not see any significant interface issues. Some of the formulas were hard to read because of distortion but it will not post any confusion for a careful reader.

Grammatical Errors rating: 5

I did not find any grammatical errors.

Cultural Relevance rating: 5

I did not see any culturally insensitive material or exercises in the text.

Overall a good text for non-math majors. Basic ideas such as experimental units, sampling distributions are not discussed. Relies too much on graphing calculators for simple algebraic calculations and finding probabilities. It is better to discuss percentiles before discussing the median and quartiles since they were defined later in the chapter. Could have used statistical software for hypothesis testing, chi-squared tests, ANOVA, and regression. Plenty of examples, exercises, review questions, and practice tests were given in the textbook. Good lab assignments.