Not a "Nutshell" book and riddled with errors

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Book:		Statistics in a Nutshell
Subject:		Not a "Nutshell" book and riddled with errors
Date:		2009-04-28 16:36:20
From:		dyoung

Rating: I had high hopes for this book. The world really needs a reference guide for those of us who have had exposure to statistics in college, but often don't remember which tool to turn to (t-test? F-test? Chi-square? a non-parametric test? I don't remember which to use when!). It would have been perfect to provide handy reference tables for which tools to look into in various circumstances, along with the assumptions that must be met to use that tool and a reference to a page number where the tool is briefly explained with some examples. I would have been happy to use this to get me started and then google for more detailed information. This isn't that book. There are no handy reference tables (of any sort) in this book. Despite the "Nutshell" title, this book is written as if it is a linear, beginner primer on statistics. I could be OK with that if it were a good beginner primer on statistics. Instead, the authors seem to assume that "Nutshell" in the title is a license to cut corners in their explanations, leaving the beginning reader confused. The worst part is that the book is riddled with errors. If you're trying to follow the examples and learn from them, you're never sure if you just don't understand or if this is yet another typo/error. Chapter 8 on t-test is so full of computation errors and typos that I doubt it was ever proof-read.