| I use this book as the main text book for the first half of a class in statistics and research methods for students from a wide variety of social science and humanities backgrounds, with little formal statistics or mathematics background. I surveyed my students with 5 questions about the book, with responses on a Likert scale (1=strongly disagree, 3=neutral, 5=strongly aggree. 17 students responded, which is a small enough sample size to caution applicability of results. The mean value of each response appears after the questions I asked. 1.The book was, overall, helpful in explaining statistical concepts. (Mean=2.73). Students would have appreciated more explanation and examples. 2.The book helped me to analyze data. (Mean=2.3) 3.The StatPlus AddIn was, overall, helpful in analyzing data. (Mean=3.76) 4.The StatPlus AddIn worked well on my computer. (Mean=3.7) 5.Overall, I would recommend this book to next year's class. (Mean=3.05) Thus, overall, weighting each question equally, my students gave the book 3.12 stars. As a professor, I give the book 4 stars. The organization of the book chapters fit well in an overview course, with one chapter assinged per week. The StatPlus AddIn is worth the cost of the book itself, as it expands the statistical capabilities of Excel without students needing to purchase additional software. There are a wide range of problems and example data sets which come with the book, applicable to a wide range of disciplines. A significant number of students had computer difficulties installing and running the StatPlus AddIn, so I would recommend to the company a support web page with FAQs, at the least. Students with little preparation in mathematics or statiscs who need a good step-by-step guide to data analysis will find this book helpful, especially if they do the excercises at the end of the chapters. (The publishers should make the answers available to everyone, not just us instructors -- for those working on their own who want to check their work). However, students with some preparation in statistics or mathematics may be better served with a more advanced text. |