Statistics Manual

I have owned a copy of this for 30 years (when the full retail price was $2.00). I am helping coach someone taking a Stats course, and I wanted to see if we could get them a copy. I am delighted to see it is still available. It is a very clear description of statistical methodology (The underlying mathematical theory is NOT presented.) I have found some of the charts in the appendix to be unique--and very helpful in UNDERSTANDING the inter-relationships. (One graph shows the confidence intervals for the correlation coefficient showing how more data points are needed for rho close to zero.)

This is an outstandingly clear handbook of basic, traditional statistics. There's no theory here, but there are large numbers of practical procedures, including significance testing, regressions, and simple experiment design. Each chapter cover a wide variety of circumstances, and forces a reader to think very hard about just what information is available and just what answers are expected of it. If you're used to books that list the tests, the procedures, and the tables of p-values, this will probably offer more choices and more detailed discussion than usual. It won't help a lot if you have an unusual circumstance that requires customized analysis, though, and doesn't talk much about the principles under the procedures. Also, it makes almost no mention of non-parameteric techniques.The one warning I have is that it dates back to pre-computer days. It's full of slick tricks for pencil & paper calculation, with approximations that let you skip a step or two. Back then, computational tips were very welcome. Today, though, they just put a false face in front of the actual operations being performed. The insight available in the basic statement of a computation is often lost.If you just want basic answers to basic problems, this is about the most useful book I've seen. It won't make you a statistician, but will put you well ahead of most stats users.

This is a superb 'How To' book for all basic statisticsl tests, methods. etc. Simple explanantions, lots of examples, step-by-step how-to do many statistical analyses. I used it during grad school and for 30+ years thereafter. Very useful and useable. If you are trying to buy a book to explain, use, practice statistics, then definitely buy this one!