The Cartoon Guide to Statistics

by Larry Gonick and Woollcott Smith

Book Overview

This description may be from another edition of this product. Updated version featuring all new material. If you have ever looked for P-values by shopping at P mart, tried to watch the Bernoulli Trails on "People's Court," or think that the standard deviation is...

Customer Reviews

A better way to grasp the applications of statistics

I disagree with the reviewer who thought the book was not useful for those without a grasp of basic statistics. Gonick presents the material in a comical, yet cogent manner designed specifically for those who might otherwise never grasp WHY and HOW they might use statistics.The truth is most college level statistics courses start with the development of a theory and only move to practical applications if there is time. Gonick presents a series of real-world problems and works backwards to the theory; a method I have seen work well in the business world. The book is not meant to be an exhaustive resource for graduate level statistics and analysis, but rather a better way for educated users to grasp the application of statistics to understandable problems.We used this book to help acclimate freshly minted graduates to statistical analysis in banking, financial services and marketing. Every person to whom we gave a copy was very pleased with the book.

Excellent suppliment to dry statistics books

This book was included in the materials for a business statistics class at Anderson. Bogged down by the reading from the course book and study guide, I didn't even open the cartoon guide for weeks, thinking it was probably too dumbed down to be helpful. Was I ever wrong. Concepts that were very difficult to understand in the course book were elucidated by the excellent examples and explanations in this guide. Made reviewing general concepts for the final exam much easier as well.This book won't help you much in the practical application of statistics (for that you need problem sets), but will certainly aid in understanding the general ideas behind the math.

A great icebreaker to an often cold subject

Statistics is a very difficult subject both to learn and teach. I wish I'd discovered this book after I'd been through the first formal class--except it wasn't written then. :) Well anyway, the CGtS is a useful book and I've recommended it to many people, all of whom got a fair amount of mileage from it. You certainly need further references, but the examples are lucid and the silly cartoons help keep people from getting too overwhelmed by seriousness. I also like the fact that the authors go through some of the history of statistics, as the subject is much more comprehensible if you know why people did what they did. Someone mentioned getting SPSS--this is, IMO, a terrible way to learn the topic. Packages should come AFTER understanding, not the other way around. If you want a computer program to help out, use a spreadsheet.

Excellent and Practical... but don't be fooled!

This book is exceptional in its ability to communicate difficult concepts in a light and entertaining manner. It seems to me that those who gave this book low ratings seem to think that the book should have magically imparted its knowledge upon them with no effort on their part. Indeed, although Gonick presents the details via cartoons, that does not change the fact that "Sigma" is still "Sigma", and if you don't understand exactly what "Sigma" represents before moving on to the next concept, then you will not understand the subsequent lessons.ie. Just because cartoons tell the tale, it doesn't mean that you will breeze through this book as you might a comic book. The individual concepts must be read and reread and perhaps even contemplated in order to truly understand each one before moving on to the next concept. If you do not do this, then, of course, nothing will make sense.This is a book of statistics, not miracles...thus work will still be necessary in order to absorb the basic concepts within it. Nevertheless, this book is far clearer and much more fun to read than any other stat book I've opened before. Very highly recommended.

GREAT BOOK (covers probability theory painlessly & well)

Probability theory (uncertainty, error estimates, confidence intervals, "p-values" and the like) take time to understand, and rigorous approaches fail to get the concepts across to the non-mathemetician. Gonick & Woolcott's Cartoon Guide to Statistics gets the ideas across with a minimum of math, and a maximum of "common sense" & (dare I say it?) intuition. The reader get's a FEEL for Probability and Statistics without violating the rigorous underpinnings of statistical theory.I've taught Statistics to undergrad and grad students, and have had to teach into stats to Grad Students in 7 week Summer short courses, and I required everybody to buy exactly the same statistics calculator (one of the TI models with a couple chapters devoted to the mechanics of "doing statistics"), Cliff Notes _Statistics_, Darryl Huff's _How_to_Lie_With_Statistics_ (a classic cartoon guide I read decades ago) and Gonick's _Cartoon_Guide_to_Statistics_.The 4 paperbacks (including the book that comes with the TI calculator) complement each other very well.If you want to learn Statistics, without the standard Sadistics, I recommend Cliff, Huff, T.I. & Gonick. Enjoy!