The Basic Practice of Statistics w/CD-ROM

In the #1 bestselling brief text, The Basic Practice of Statistics (BPS), Moore brings the data analysis approach to the one-term course, with an accessible, fun style that helps students with limited mathematical backgrounds utilize the same tools, techniques, and interpretive skills working statisticians rely on everyday.

This extraordinary new edition of Moore’s classic offers a number of innovations, including briefer chapters, a new problem-solving process, a wealth of new exercises, and new all-in-one place StatsPortal, with all the electronic tools instructors and students need.

Customer Reviews: Read 8 more reviews…

The Basic Practice of statistics, 4th ed. January 20, 2009
jrc10
0 out of 1 found this review helpful

Product was a little more worn than expected but still decent. It arrived in good time as well. overall I am pretty satisfied with what I got. thanks!

I wanted to like this book, I really did December 14, 2008
BookMan (Rancho Santa Margarita, CA)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful

. . .but it misses the mark by having too many flaws. As far as textbooks are concerned, it tries to do a good job making statistics assessable to those who do not yet grasp the subject but it fails to do so for a variety of reasons. Unfortunately, many of the concepts are not presented clearly and often assumes that the student has completely mastered them before moving on. This is particularly evident as the book progresses and one needs to hunt for topics that were presented one hundred pages (or more) previously and have not been discussed since.

It is necessary to continuously jump around to previous pages in order to find materials being referenced and new examples do not contain all of the information need to solve them. While the solutions to many practice problems are found at the back of the book, they are not explained adequately making it almost impossible to determine how to reach the correct solution.

While this text is on the right track (disregarding the author’s personal biases regarding his non-statistical political agendas), it is incomplete and leads to many additional (and needless) hours work through. For those who have not had a statistics course, this can cause a lot of grief. I ended up purchasing several other books in order to gain an understanding of what the author did not explain effectively. For me, this was compounded by the fact that our class devoured this book in a mere ten weeks – far too much information (especially when that information is not presented sufficiently) to glean in such a short period of time.

Finally! November 10, 2008
Ray Depew (Colorado)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful

It’s difficult to write a glowing review for a statistics textbook. Even if it’s an excellent book, deserving of five stars, it’s treating a subject the study of which, for most people, ranks right up there between watching paint dry and getting warts removed.

I’ve used several statistics textbooks in teaching, tutoring and studying stats. Some of them had great illustrations, and some had a cool CD in the back. Most had instructions for using a TI calc, Excel or Minitab to solve problems. Some tried to push a sociopolitical agenda through careful selection of examples and problems. But until this book, none of them did a decent job of explaining, in plain language, what all the “things” in statistics really meant.

Finally we have a textbook that explains to the student studying statistics for the first time, what the “standard deviation of the mean” (to choose a random example) really means, and why he/she should care. Other books may try, but their language is still up there in Math Land. This book gets it right.

This book also has the great illustrations, the cool CD in back, the TI/Excel/Minitab instructions. It also has the sociopolitical agenda, as evidenced in the authors’ choices for examples and problems. In a clever bit of self-parody, the book warns repeatedly about how easy it is to promote a sociopolitical agenda through the judicious use of statistics.

The authors announce at the beginning of the book that it will not include any “how-to” algorithms or practice for calculating basic statistics by hand, since everyone has access to tools that do the hard work for you. That’s a disappointment. Every student of statistics ought to calculate a standard deviation by hand once in their life, just so they know how it’s done.

information asymmetry September 29, 2008
Chieh Hsu
This was supposed to be a free shipping 4 to 5 days delivery item.
However, the online tracking systems shows message that was inconsistent to the actual delivery status.
Took more than 2 weeks to get the item.

Novice at Stats September 20, 2008
dame
2 out of 2 found this review helpful

I have never taken a Stats course before and I find this book deficient in several areas. First of all, I do not think it gives comprehensive explanation involving many concepts. Secondly, the problems at the end of each chapter incorporate formulas, equations of concepts that haven’t been covered previously. Therefore, it’s difficult to complete homework without much invesetigation and frustration! Lastly, I do not care for how the book refers back to previous examples on several occcasions. This cause you to have to jump back and forth in the book. Besides that, many of the illustrations have similar titles (e.g. example, figure, exercise..) and can lead to some confusion.