Statistics: A Gentle Introduction

I taught several statistics courses using Statistics: A Gentle Introduction (1st ed.). I just received the 2nd edition. I have shelves of stats books and these are by far the most down to earth, easy to understand stats books I've found and are ideal for teaching. The 2nd edition builds upon the first edition and offers practice problems and sample test questions at the end of each chapter. The 2nd edition includes SPSS output and a description of the output for regression & correlation (but not for ANOVA, t-tests, chi-square). The 2nd edition includes a nice description of confidence intervals. I highly recommend this book!

This book was fantastic! It outlined the basic concepts of statistics in a way that didn't completely confuse the student. I was able to pass all my tests and actually UNDERSTAND my coursework. Kudos to the author--I HIGHLY recommend this book to the beginning statistics student.

This has to be the most "gentle" book about statistics on the market. I can actually say that I now understand the basic statistical methods! Too often, statistics books give you too much information all at once, which can be confusing to beginners. This book gradually lays it out step by step and gives clear examples of almost every possible variation. Authors of statistics texts often confuse the reader in their attempts to impress them with technical language. This book is written in language understandable to beginners and proceeds at a digestable pace. Plus, it includes brief glimpses of historical information to give the reader a broader understanding of the subject. I highly recommend this as a text for introductory statistics classes or as a refresher for anyone!

This book introduced all areas of statistics with a story or an explanation that made learning statistics enjoyable. In addition, this book contained many detailed examples that I used over and over again throughtout the course as a way of ensuring myself that I truly understood the concept that I was currently being taught. Statistics: A Gentle Introduction is a book that will remian in my personal library for many years.