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Title: Statistics for the Life Sciences (3rd Edition)
ISBN: 013041316X
Author:
Myra L. Samuels
Jeffrey A. Witmer
Publicate Date: 2002-12-13
Publish: 2002-12-13
List Price: $130.67
Average Customer Rating: 3.5
Format: Hardcover
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Amazon Lowest New Price: $89.60
Amazon Lowest Used Price: $43.99
Amazon Merchant Price: $117.60
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| Customer Review: |
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1: Excellent for students
As a college student taking statistics again (I took it before in high school), this book is much better than my old high school textbook. The examples are clear and there are optional lessons for those who want to delve further in the reasoning behind statistical formulas.
I disagree with a reviewer who said that this book does not explain the theory behind the statistics. Everything is explained thoroughly, or maybe I see it that way because I'm not a math major. If you're taking a statistics class to fulfill a general requirement (such as pre-med students), you're most likely not interested in knowing where the formula came from, and the explanations in this book are more than enough. I think it's more important to know how to apply the formulas to different situations, which is what this book demonstrates very well.
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2: Toooooooo expensive
This is a required text book for a class I am taking. It is way to expensive for what it is if this isn't for a class.
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3: Disappointed
I am personally disappointed with this book for the following reasons:
1) Most math books have the answers in the back for nearly all of the odd programs; this book does not. In fact, there's little rhyme or reason for the answers listed in the back. In short, most odd problem answers are not listed yet some of the even answers are given. Go figure..
2) I don't care for the chapter and section layouts. In my calculus text, everything is more developed. In some of the better texts, definitions are given before the explanations are given, which in turn precedes the examples given. This book does not of that. There is not a comprehensive list of definitions at the end of the chapter, the in-chapter definitions are weak, and they fail to fully develop the material before jumping into examples, etc.
But, it is a textbook and it costs > $100, so by publisher standards, it is a home run.
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4: definitely oversimplified.
I took an AP statistics course in high school that went into much better detail than this book ever did. With this book I could not have made it out with the understanding I currently have of statistics without having taken that class years ago. Our instructor was pretty much incompetent, so it was a true test of how well the textbook got the job done. I watched my classmates really struggle with this book. The problem is that the concepts of different test statistics and what they actually mean are too oversimplified. The book does a great job of teaching how through an extensive amount of examples, but not why, and not enough instances or explanations of what should be done when problems deviate from the given example. It is really important in statistics to know how to handle different kinds of data and which tests to apply to them, but the book in my opinion did a poor job of distinguishing and explaining the different types of tests, as well as how the results should be analyzed. I would definitely recommend looking elsewhere for a good statistics textbook. When it comes to mathematics, theory (knowing why a problem is solved the way it is and why it works) is just as important as being able to correctly solve the problem.
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5: Book better than class.
This textbook was required for my statistics class at the University of Wisconsin. I found the book easier to follow with better examples than my lecture was. Often I cannot learn anything right from the book, but this book made it easy with complete examples and simple descriptions of variables and theory. The book was so good, in fact, I rarely made it to class because I learned it better from the book!
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