Introductory Business Statistics with Interactive Spreadsheets - 1st Canadian Edition

Reviewed by Amro El-Adle, Assistant Professor, Virginia Tech on 12/30/21

Comprehensiveness rating: 3 see less

Each of the chapters presented is clear, captures a good depth of information for this level, and does provide a good number of real-world examples which come to life via the interactive Excel sheets. Overall this is great. One component of the text which was missing was homework problems and solutions. It may be that there is a companion website with problems that I missed. But as is, this text does not include any homework problems nor was I able to find a glossary or index.

Content Accuracy rating: 5

I found the explanations to be accurate to the best of my knowledge, and thorough as well.

Relevance/Longevity rating: 5

This is a great choice for incorporating Excel in an interactive way, which bodes well for longevity. Another bonus here is that the book does reproduce relevant mathematical formulas, and gives them some attention. In many cases it asks the reader to think intuitively about a formula and what it might represent. Importantly, the book does not waste a lot of ink on the arithmetic.

Clarity rating: 5

I found that concepts like CLT and ANOVA, which are often problematic for students to understand, were clear here and well defined. The examples provided do help bring the concepts to life, and important terms are clearly highlighted and repeated where relevant.

Consistency rating: 5

The style, thoroughness, and the frequency of examples in Excel and from practical settings were consistent in my experience.

Modularity rating: 5

The modules are reasonably self-enclosed, so that you could start with any chapter and still have a good idea about the material there without having to jump back in the book.

Organization/Structure/Flow rating: 5

There are 8 chapters, which proceed naturally from descriptive stats to different kinds of statistical tests.

Interface rating: 5

I've written already about the interactive Excel sheets above, which I think make this a distinctive and rewarding text to use. It's also presented in PDF, digital book, and online as a separate website which is great.

Grammatical Errors rating: 5

The text was grammatically accurate, easy to understand and looked to be edited thoroughly.

Cultural Relevance rating: 5

The focus on Canadian examples was great, and I appreciated the author's attention to details on the names of companies and people and other Canadian connections. More broadly I felt there was balance in the selection of diverse characters and situations for the examples through the book.

Comments

If possible, it would be most helpful to have an accompanying question bank here that would make assigning homework practical and relevant.

Reviewed by Shuting Wang, Teaching Assistant Professor, North Carolina State University on 6/1/21

Comprehensiveness rating: 4 see less

The textbook has an index, but doesn't have a glossary. The important concepts are bolded in each chapter, I feel it should add a glossary to add its value. It covers all the basic areas that I would like to cover in an intro business statistics course. It also provides more extensive topics for additional options. I am going to list the topic it covers in the following. I feel it may be helpful for other instructors who are interested in adopting this textbook since the textbook doesn't provide a detailed topic lists except the chapter content index. The topics it covers are descriptive statistics and frequency distributions in Chapter 1; normal distribution, t distribution in Chapter 2; estimate population mean, proportion and variance in Chapter 3; hypothesis test for goodness of fit, testing population proportions, testing independence and categorical variables in Chapter 4; 1-sample t test, 2-sample t test and paired t test in Chapter 5; F- test for equal variance and one way ANOVA in Chapter 6; Mann-Whitney U-test, Wilcoxon signed ranks test and Spearman’s rank correlation in Chapter 7; simple regression and its inferences and a little bit multiple regression in Chapter 8.

Content Accuracy rating: 5

The content in this textbook appears to be accurate, error-free and unbiased to me

Relevance/Longevity rating: 4

The textbook is up-to-date and should be easy to update. Although it says it has been Canadianized, the concepts and materials seem to have no problem to be taught in the US. The text is written and/or arranged in such a way that necessary updates will be relatively easy and straightforward to implement. A very appealing feature of the textbook is the interactive spreadsheets. While examples are provided, it doesn't provide instructions to the students how they could generate the spreadsheets themselves. Thus make it a little difficult if you want to change them to different examples.

Clarity rating: 5

The language is simple, straight forward and concise. It does a good job explaining the statistical concepts using an intuitive way in a business application setting. It would be very helpful to business students who are afraid of statistics because of the math and jargon.

Consistency rating: 5

The text is consistent in terms of terminology and framework. At the beginning of the textbook, students are introduced to two young managers at Foothill Mills, a small manufacturer of socks, stockings, and pantyhose. They use statistics to solve practical business problems they encountered at Foothill Mills throughout this book. This consistency in example background setting allows students to focus more on the new statistical concepts rather than familiarizing themselves with a different story in different examples every time, thus saves students' learning time and triggers more students interests.

Modularity rating: 5

The text is easily and readily divisible into smaller reading sections that can be assigned at different points within the course. Each chapter should be easily reordered as long as the instructor covers the chapters “Descriptive Statistics and frequency distributions”, “The normal and the t-distributions”, “Making estimates”

Organization/Structure/Flow rating: 5

The book is well organized, but it can be clearly seen that the book was written with specific course development objectives within a given school.

Interface rating: 4

The text is free of significant interface issues.
The web version of the textbook provides interactive spreadsheets, which is fantastic. The students can change the numbers in yellow cells and play with the examples by themselves. I think this is a very attractive feature of this textbook and it's the reason why I decided to review this book. But like I mentioned above, while examples are provided, it doesn't provide instructions to the students how they could generate the spreadsheets themselves.
For the pdf version, the links to the interactive spreadsheets are located in Appendix, not within the relevant chapters. This makes the pdf version less interactive compared to the web version

Grammatical Errors rating: 5

It appears to me that the text contains no grammatical errors.

Cultural Relevance rating: 5

Although it says all the examples in the textbook has been Canadianized, the text is not culturally insensitive or offensive in any way and it could be used in any US college.

Comments

Overall speaking, the book is a valuable book. It provides very good explanations on statistical concepts in a business background. It avoids those intimidating math calculations by providing interactive spreadsheet support. The name of "1st Canadian Edition" shouldn't stop people using it in US.
I may not use it as a textbook since the text is concise, some concepts are just briefly discussed with the assumptions that the students are already familiar with certain concepts. But it will be a very valuable resource as a supplement or review material from a different perspective.

Reviewed by Micheline Al Harrack, Continuing Instructor, Marymount University on 2/1/21

Comprehensiveness rating: 4 see less

This 2015 version of the textbook includes an index but is missing a glossary. The textbook starts with Descriptive Statistics and Frequency Distributions in Chapter 1 and ends with Regression Basics in Chapter 8, and covering hypothesis testing, t-test, and non-parametric tests in between. As its title implies, it is a textbook designed to cover introductory concepts and is more like a compilation of the instructor’s notes and lectures in a compact manner. Given the shortness and compactness of each chapter, the absence of a glossary does not negatively impact the value of the content as important terminology is bolded in each chapter.

Content Accuracy rating: 5

This textbook is accurate in its concepts’ and examples’ presentation. I did not notice any material errors.

Relevance/Longevity rating: 3

The author covers descriptive statistics and frequency distributions in Chapter 1, then talks about Chi-square in chapter 2 then again in Chapter 4, while there is no chapter dedicated to cover probability in the opening chapters. In different chapters, relevant examples are given but solutions are provided not demonstrated especially with the interactive spreadsheets. While very useful and informative, the students are not instructed on how to generate these models in Excel.

Clarity rating: 4

The language is simple, straightforward, clear, with an easy-to-follow narrative style. There are assumptions that the students are already familiar with certain concepts as they are briefly defined when mentioned.

Consistency rating: 5

The text is consistent in terms of framework and terminology.

Modularity rating: 5

Each chapter’s topic is contained within the chapter with few exceptions. Each topic is briefly and clearly covered and summarized within the dedicated chapter. I would use these chapters as summaries or references about a topic if a student needs to review the material with a different approach or perspective.

Organization/Structure/Flow rating: 4

The author builds upon examples in previous chapters to introduce and explain new concepts and theories in subsequent in a logical manner. The book is well organized in its brevity and conciseness. It is not comprehensive, but this limitation might be due t the fact that it was written with specific course development objectives within a given school.

Interface rating: 5

I did not notice any interface problems. The links to the interactive spreadsheets are located in Appendix, not within the relevant chapters.

Grammatical Errors rating: 5

The text is well written and free from grammatical errors.

Cultural Relevance rating: 5

The textbook references Canadian examples and culture, it is universally relevant and does not include any offensive language or culturally insensitive material as far as I can assess. In fact, the examples used can be adapted to different contexts and cultures. I did not find that the Canadian edition is different from what is taught in the United States.

Comments

I would use this textbook as a supplement or recommended material in a Business Statistics course. The Interactive Spreadsheets are a good addition that can be complemented with instructions on how to generate the models.

Reviewed by Jed Utsinger, Instructor, Ohio University Regional Higher Education on 2/1/18

Comprehensiveness rating: 3 see less

This textbook has an index. However, since this was an adaption of an early textbook, one would expect improvements in providing the student with both an index and a glossary. This did not happen.

The textbook has obviously been written for a specific university course and does not cover all areas of statistics.

The textbook has improved upon providing numerous examples for a better understanding of statistics with real-world experience using interactive spreadsheets.

Content Accuracy rating: 5

As with the original textbook. this adaption remains relatively free of errors and appears to be accurate and unbiased.

Relevance/Longevity rating: 2

The content is as up-to-date as any statistics textbook can be. While the textbook was updated to reference Canadian concepts and examples, the examples all appear to be relative to all populations. The original textbook was written in 2010, this adaption was written in 2015. The text provides interactive Excel spreadsheets.

While the spreadsheets may be useful for showing a student how a concept works, one would expect instructions on how to use Excel to actually compute these tests.These are not supplied. Because of this, I would expect the life of the textbook to be short lived.

Clarity rating: 5

The textbook is written in a clear and concise manner. The student should be able to feel as if the author is discussing the concepts with him or her directly. While all statistical textbooks use technical language, the author explains each of these in simple language which should help the student learn about statistics.

The use of the interactive spreadsheets, when used, provide clarity for the various examples.

Consistency rating: 5

All chapters of the textbook show consistency in both terminology and within the framework used. Each new term is identified within the chapter with an explanation which follows. While the author explains the different terminology well, I would have liked to have seen a glossary of the terms and explanations at the end of the textbook.

As in the original textbook, the student is introduced to several people from Foothill Mills. Foothill Mills is used throughout the textbook to provide explanations and clarity to real-life statistical situations. Using Foothill Mills consistently throughout the textbook allows the student to learn about new situations without learning about a new company, people, etc.

Modularity rating: 5

Each chapter is a module within itself and can be used in any order that would make sense to the professor. Subheadings within each chapter are prevalent and as a general rule, large chunks of text are broken down into readable self-contained sections.

Organization/Structure/Flow rating: 5

While I would have liked to have seen more about descriptive statistics in the beginning, overall the flow of the textbook is provided in a logical and clear fashion.

While many of the topics are tied together throughout the textbook, I would have liked to have seen a final chapter with a review of Foothill Mills and the issues discussed throughout the textbook as a review of the statistics presented within each chapter.

Interface rating: 3

In the original textbook, several instances had formulas following across two pages. The adaption has corrected many of these issues.

The web version has links embedded within each chapter for the interactive spreadsheets, and shows the actual spreadsheet within each chapter. The pdf version refers you to the appendix to even view the spreadsheet. I would have liked the pdf version to have the spreadsheet shown within the chapter and have the link for the interactive spreadsheet readily available also.

In a nutshell, the web version is what students should use to reduce confusion.

Grammatical Errors rating: 5

Upon the first reading of the textbook, no obvious grammatical errors were found.

Cultural Relevance rating: 5

The adaption has changed all the information presented and the examples have "been revised to reflect Canadian content." While this may be true, I believe anyone from any culture would find no offense in any of the information and examples used throughout the textbook.

Comments

I believe many will skip over the textbook and not give it the review it should have. As I expected, statistics in Canada are no different form the statistics we teach in the United States. It is a shame that the textbook was titled as the "1st Canadian Edition," even though I understand the reasoning for this title.