Starting Statistics
A Short, Clear Guide
- Neil Burdess - Deakin University, Australia
Statistics: A Simple Guide for Students is an accessible, humorous and easy introduction to statistics for social science students.
In this refreshing book, experienced author and academic Neil Burdess shows that statistics is not the result of some mysterious "black magic", but rather the result of some very basic arithmetic. Getting rid of confusing x's and y's, he shows that it's the intellectual questions that come before and after the calculations that are important: (i) What are the best statistics to use with your data? and (ii) What do the calculated statistics tell you?
Statistics: A Simple Guide for Students aims to help students make sense of the logic of statistics and to decide how best to use statistics to analyze their own data. What's more, it is not reliant on students having access to any particular kind of statistical software package.
This is a very useful book for any student in the social sciences doing a statistics course or needing to do statistics for themselves for the first time.
This is a book on statistics that is written in a clear fashion. It gently welcomes the reluctant reader of quantitative methodologies into the often complicated world of statistics. It introduces essential knowledge using real-life examples, which makes it more manageable to retain. It provides a good starting point for further exploration of statistics. I will recommend that our library purchases it.
we already have other books which are better suited as core text. However, this is quite a good, easy to read book that would be very help for some of our masters students who are finding statistics a bit challenging. Good book for those students to bring them up to speed but not as a core text for the whole cohort, hence added to our recommended book list for the students as supplemental adoption.
Not sufficent depth
A restrained and digestible introduction to stats for the scared and uninitiated. Provides a valuable interim step for students between lectures and more complex texts
This is a useful test which explains concepts clearly with a variety of useful examples.
This is a useful supplemental book for students studying research methods.
This very readable book will form an excellent primer on Statistics to give those who are slightly hesitant or even afraid of the subject more confidence in dealing with the underlyng concepts and rationale. It covers the methods in straightforward, common-sense terms that our students will appreciate. It has come too late for our current course, but I will certainly let our students know about it and recommend students on next year's course to start reading through the book before the course starts.
A good starting book for social science students with little or no knowledge of statistics, the book is refreshing and very accessible, the author provides explains key statistical concepts using simple language. A useful book for those who do not like maths but want to learn about statistics.
I will not be adopting this book was a bit confusing on what I consider the basics for my classes. For example measuring categories was seperated from the other types of measurment, like interval and ratio data. The order of chapters does not suit either with hyposthesis testing coming late on in the text. Thanks.
A good book as start. Probably better for undergraduate. But useful for postgraduate as a quick reference.
