Statistics for the Utterly Confused, 2nd edition (Utterly Confused) | 
 enlarge | Author: Lloyd R. Jaisingh
Publisher: McGraw-Hill
Category: Book
List Price: $17.95
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Rating:  40 reviews
Sales Rank: 21464
Media: Paperback
Edition: 2
Pages: 352
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.6
Dimensions (in): 9 x 7.3 x 1
ISBN: 0071461930
Dewey Decimal Number: 519.5
EAN: 9780071461931
ASIN: 0071461930
Publication Date: December 22, 2005
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Product Description
Statistics for the Utterly Confused, Second Edition When it comes to understanding statistics, even good students can be confused. Perfect for students in any introductory non-calculus-based statistics course, and equally useful to professionals working in the world, Statistics for the Utterly Confused is your ticket to success. Statistical concepts are explained step-by-step and applied to such diverse fields as business, economics, finance, and more. The message of Statistics for the Utterly Confused is simple: you don't have to be confused anymore. Updated and expanded to give you the latest changes in the field, this up-to-the-minute edition includes many new examples of Excel output, the most widely used of all statistics programs; a new chapter on Analysis of Variance (ANOVA); and 200 additions to the 700 self-testing questions and answers. The expert author's Web site also gives you tons of fresh examples, practice problems, and strategies--so you can go from utterly confused to totally prepared in no time! Inside, you'll discover how to: - Grasp the meaning of everyday statistical concepts
- Find out what's probable and what isn't
- Read, understand, and solve statistics problems
- Improve your scores on exams
- Use your skills in any field
Download Description
Statistics for the Utterly Confused is your user-friendly introduction to elementary statistics, designed especially for non-math majors Required courses in statistics are cause for alarm among more than 500,000 undergraduates in such disciplines as nursing, allied health, pre-law, pre-medicine, business administration, and criminal justice. This super-accessible book demystifies the dreaded subject for non-math majors. Statistics for the Utterly Confusedprovides a logical, step-by-step approach to introductory statistics, stripping away confusing material and clarifying key concepts without long, theoretical discussion and includes: Handy icons throughout the text offer easy visual aids 500 self-testing questions Technology Corner sections explain the latest software Provides more than 200 examples and solved problems
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| Customer Reviews: Read 35 more reviews...
VERY HELPFUL BOOK! January 6, 2007
Jeni H. (Long Island, NY)
2 out of 3 found this review helpful
I had to take a college Statistics 2 class and this book was much easier to understand than the textbook. This book became attached to me during the class. For anyone having to take a statistics class (even high school level), I highly recommend getting this book to have as a reference guide. The book even shows you how to do the formulas in excel to get the answers needed to questions!
 Okay reference. Too many errors. October 29, 2006
D. Messer (MN USA)
4 out of 5 found this review helpful
This book is structured more like a reference than a text. As such, it will be helpful as a second reference source to an actual text book to help clarify concepts. There are many better books out there for instruction.
My biggest problem with this book is the number of errors in the examples. It seems like you can't go 10 pages without running into an error that make you go, "wait a minute... didn't he just say... but now he's saying...???"
A very good example of such an error is on page 239, example 12-1, where the author states a problem that involves a proportion at 60%, then shows the math at 65%. This book is full of these kinds of issues and will, at times, completely throw you off track.
 This book will utterly confuse you June 5, 2006
CS (NC)
3 out of 7 found this review helpful
Do yourself a favor and avoid this book. The book does not explain, it only documents, with heavy and unnecessary use of terminology. If you want to learn and understand, get Bartz's "Basic Statistical Concepts," an excellent book in it's 4th edition.
 If you are looking for practical instruction skip this book April 28, 2006
xxxxx111000 (xxx)
4 out of 8 found this review helpful
If you are studying for the GMAT or a similar test, this book might be helpful. However, if you are struggling with a problem and need practical advice on what test to use and how to perform it, pass this book by. I bought this book in part because it said on the cover that it would tell you how to use Excel for statistic. Forget that unless you think being told "this can be done on Excel" is how-to instructions.
Good for teachers/tutors April 14, 2006
Sarah Rainsberger (Canada)
7 out of 7 found this review helpful
I just picked up this book tonight. It looks great for my purposes, as a math/stats tutor. I am always looking for books with lots of practice questions (and the nice thing is, this book includes true/false; multiple choice; short answer etc. -- very handy for testing students' conceptual knowledge) and this one is full of them!
Also, I wanted a book that the tutors I train could use as a manual -- something without extra fluff, but with enough meat to make the concepts clear. I think this book is well-suited to that purpose: giving to mathematically-oriented people (like my tutors) who maybe don't have a lot of statistics knowledge and expecting them to be able to pick the material up easily.
What is also helpful is the reference to the TI-83/84 calculators and the minitab output. As someone who learned how to do all this by hand, I sometimes find it disorienting to have to rely on computer output with no work on my part (since by doing the calculations, I actually understood what I was computing). It's helpful to have these alternate methods addressed and explained, as I suppose this technology is an evil I'm just going to have to get used to! :)
It looks like the complaints about the first edition have been addressed in this new second edition. The chapter titles are quite clear. (However, I don't mind accurate chapter titles, even if dry or intimidating, since my staff will be using it as a reference -- and we actually DO need to be able to look up material according to the technical terms, and use ths vocabulary to help other students!)
Also, previous reviewers have mentioned that the book left out some key topics such as F-tests, ANOVA etc. These topics are all in the second edition. So, as far as I can tell, this book should cover most intro level Stats I courses (at our Canadian universities, at least!) The link to the table of contents appears to show the first edition TOC. The second edition has an extra chapter (#15) which covers:
15-1 Comparing population means graphically
15-2 Some Terminology associated with ANOVA
15-3 The Hypothesis test of ANOVA
15-4 The Test Statistic and the F Distribution
15-5 One-Way or Single-Factor ANOVA Tests
I do agree that it's a bit (and perhaps only a bit) less dense than a textbook, but I do like the "get right to the heart of it" approach to the material, as well as the loads of practice questions. But again, I'm looking for something that people who are already math-literate can use as a quick reference/teaching guide. The language is not exactly lay-person friendly, but as a curriculum writer myself, I know that's always a trade-off. You want to be true to the language and vocabulary of the material you're explaining, but at the same time, you're often dealing with an audience that doesn't really care too much about being that precise, so long as they get the idea. So what do you do? :) Jaisingh has chosen to keep more traditional (yes, technical/boring) definitions for these concepts for the most part. I don't condemn him for it, but people looking for definitions that don't require thought probably will. Students who are comfortable with math/English should not have significant difficulties tackling this book. Those who are "utterly confused" will likely not find this book as "hand-holding" as perhaps they'd like. Do face this book preparing to actually learn something, and learn the proper terminology for it and a bit of rigor. There are *tons* of explanations of terms and definitions throughout the book. And, in their attempt to be accurate, they do sacrifice some layperson-friendliness.
If I could add one extra topic to this book it would be elementary combinatorics so that students could more easily compute probabilities that relied upon permutations or combinations to count the number of ways an event can happen vs. the number of events in the sample space. I know that this isn't always a part of a Stats class, but here in Ontario, Canada, our senior high school stats class ("Data Managment") involves a significant portion of this material. With this small addition, this book would cover our entire Gr. 12 Data Management course, and I wouldn't need another book to deal with combinatorics.
Statistics tutors looking for something to add to their collection should definitely consider this book. I think it will be useful for tutoring both university Stats I as well as AP Statistics. What I will find most useful is all the definitions (which I suspect I'll have to break down, word-for-word and explain to the students, but at least they're there as a good reference), theorems and practice questions. I would not expect most of my students to be able to teach themselves from this book, but rather to be taught by a tutor using this book. The price is quite reasonable for the content and practice questions, and I have already warned one student who will be taking her Stats I next year at university that I expect her to buy this book. :)
If you really are utterly confused by math, academic-style prose and/or statistics, then this is probably not the book to *teach* yourself with, but if you are taking a stats course, the problems alone should be worth the investment as extra practice.
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