Introductory Statistics
A Statistics textbook mostly have a standard structure. This bookk covers major subjects of the course.
Central limit theorem is given a whole chapter, which is good because of its importance.
However, I would like to see these more.
No explanation for Normal and other table use. I understand we now mostly use computers for the table values; however, I believe, students still get benefit from the use of tables although it is an additional material to cover.
Normality test would be needed. No Goodness-of-fit test or probability plot is explained. Normality test is important for the inference statistics.
It would be good to explain mean and variance of linear combination of variables, such as E[5X+2Y]= 5E[X]+2E[Y].
It will be better to give a form of PDF (or PMF) of discrete random variables.
Confidence Interval formula of F-distrbution would be better.
This book is accurate.
Elementary Statitics theory is not changed quickly. Although the application examples can be more or less current, this book is uptodated.
This book is clear in its contents. This book is actually carefully written for better understandinig of the materials.
Yes. No problem.
This book follows standard chapter layout of Statistics books (except that F-distribution is explained and used at the last part of the book). Good concise sections with many problems helps understanding the materials.
Yes. Again, the standard structure of Statistics textbooks.
Explanantions are simple and clear.
No interface problems.
Looks good.
No problem.
(1)
The competition of Statistics textbooks in the market is very high, and there are many good books available (at high prices).
One of the important aspects of the textbooks is the presentation, such as font, page layout and color. To choose a book to review for my possible use in the near future, I selected this book because it caught my eyes among a few candidate books. For example, this book has better use of colors, colorful boxes, and arrangement of tables to better guide the reading and understanding of the materials. This book has good details of the editing and has a very competitive presentation compared with other commercial Statistics textbooks. This book is well written. This book proves “a free textbook is not necessarily worse than more expensive books.”
(2)
It is hard for a Statistics textbook to be better than others due to the large number of books available. The most successful aspect of this book to me is the exercises. They are carefully made to make students easily understand the lecture materials and get feeling of real statistical analysis. The book also has very nice in-class exercises (Stats Lab) in all chapters. While this is very good for student learning, I wonder if an instructor can find time for this when covering the materials of the course. This book has many good features – such as key word summary and chapter review at the end of a chapter.
(3)
This book provides instructor resources such as syllabus, assignments, quizzes, exams, lecture videos and others. Although these are popular with commercial textbooks, these features are certainly helpful. Especially, it provides nice assignments (or projects).
The lecture video, which is helpful, is partially based on hand writing. I would prefer the video to be completely based on PPT.
No PowerPoint lecture note is provided. This will make the preparation of lecture note time taking.
(4)
The book explains the use of TI calculators; however, use of Excel will be more helpful for the students, both for descriptive Statistics and inferential Statistics. Although one book cannot have all possible contents, explanation of Minitab or Matlab will be helpful.
(5) Editing
The numbers in tables can be centered for a better appearance.
The “bar” notation of some variables (e.g., x_bar for sample mean) is away from the variable (e.g. x), which makes some equations less neat appearance.
Solution of homework of each chapter is given in the chapter, which is nice.