Jun 03 2007
Books, To be continued…
I have had several inquiries about good books on entry statistics and to be honest I don’t own really any basic statistics books. A majority of the books I have collected over the years have been those chosen by my professors and read like, well, math books (sorry to all my wonderful professors - but really, if you would have chosen anything less, I guess I would have had no reason to come listen to all of your insightful lectures). So from the long list of those that I have studied from, I am not sure if I would really recommend any of them as a starter book.
I do know of a great on-line resource book published by StatSoft that I have referenced in the past. The great thing is the on-line book is free and it walks you through basic concepts of statistical terminology as well as basic statistics and goes through more advanced methodologies as well. The down side is that the examples included in the material are focused on the StatSoft software but the theories and practices a great starter. Especially if you are not sure if you are ready to invest into a hardback resource.
In an effort to stock my library with more “user friendly” statistics books I recently purchased Statistics for People Who (Think They) Hate Statistics with SPSS Student Version 13.0 2nd Edition. Once it arrives and I have had some time to thumb through it a bit I will let you know how this books reads. The one reason why I chose this book was it’s title… very catchy. Ok, not really but it is catchy. I chose it because it comes with supporting software that is a great tool for analyzing web data from a behavioral standpoint. SPSS stands for Statistical package for the Social Sciences and I have always believed that analyzing web data is the same as analyzing a data set from a social sciences experiment. I look forward to reviewing the book and will let you know my thoughts very soon. Note: If the book is good, there is a 3rd edition soon to be released so if you are interested in this book you may want to wait for the 3rd edition.
For those of you who are eager to purchase now…. As a rule of thumb, I find that statistics books pertaining to “business” statistics seem to be fairly basic in nature.
Happy reading.
Until next time… safe analyzing.
Thank you very much.
I take the time to look at the web site and find it very helpful. I will wait for your book review.
Hello Wendi,
Though not a book, Carnegie Mellon University has a free online course on entry-level Statistics that may be beneficial in learning the basics and get a big picture view on the benefits of statistics and data analysis:
http://www.cmu.edu/oli/courses/enter_statistics.html
Hi Andrew, Thanks for the great resource. I will include that in my list.
Wendi
[…] have had a few weeks to read through the book I purchased and wanted to share my thoughts on it’s level of readability, coverage, and […]