Research and Evaluation for Business

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Summary: Waste of precious time and effort (-0 stars, really)
Review: I am taking an online accelerated statistics course and have used this book for Part 1 of the course, which is only five weeks long. Part 2 of the course will follow with the same textbook and I'm completely disgusted. I found myself spending inordinate amounts of time doing web searches to find examples of what was being described in the sections. The authors only show one example, which has a solution, of how a problem is done, then set you free to "try it" on other exercises. The problem is that there are no solutions, so you're sunk. You have no idea if you're on the right track or not. There are scenarios throughout the section that are referred to further in the text, long after you've gone on to another topic. In order to remember the exampled scenario, you have to hunt back in the text to get the particulars. Horrible. There is no list of symbols in one spot with definitions which can help a novice out as a reference. One of the problems had an error and was pointed out by the instructor as something to ignore-not a warm, fuzzy feeling when you're desperately trying to learn something online. Everyone in the class is finding this book difficult. I will send the reviews to the University as Exhibit A for why they should pick something else for their students. This book is heavy and filled with hot air.

Rating:
Summary: Tell your instructor to read these reviews!!!
Review: This book gives some nice background information on some of the things you can use statistics for, like testing the air between individual facial tissues. It also informed me as to why sometimes I cannot get the first tissue out of the box. It is from grow-back due to the product being on the shelf too long.

However, I was taking a statistics class and wanted to know how to calculate an analysis of variance on two populations of data. I wanted to learn how to used Minitab, since all the later chapters use Minitab for the exercises. HOWEVER, THEY DON'T TELL YOU WHAT COMMANDS TO USE!! When it gets to chapter 16, it just gives you the results from Minitab to populate in the extended portions your formulas that go beyond what Minitab does, but it never gives you the actual formula to calculate it by hand or the commands to generate the values shown in the results. In particular, when calculating the "sum of squares blocks" SSBL, it gives an example of SSBL in some results from Minitab but does not tell you have to calculate it. There is not one example of how they get the SSBL in any of the "Examples" or the "Try it Now" problems that contain the answers following the problems.

I agree with most everything each of the other negative reviews have stated. PLEASE FIND DIFFERENT BOOK!!!

Rating:
Summary: Let the confusion begin....
Review: This is just about the most confusing statistics book ever written. Even my professor does not like the book but has no choice in the text for class. If math is not your strongpoint, I suggest getting "Statistics for People Who (Think They) Hate Statistics" by Neil Salkind (recommended by my professor)and "Schaum's Outline of Statistics" by Murray Spiegel as supplemental reading. I would burn this book if it wasn't so expensive!