If this is in fact the book by Dancey and Reidy then actually reading it
will make you even more depressed. My daughter had to use it for her OU
Psychology module, for which it is the set text.
Right at the outset she was puzzled why her calculation of s.d. using the
formula in the text did not agree with the SPSS value given. Of course it
was the n or n-1 problem, but not mentioned in the text and obviously not
realised by the authors. I was also bemused (horrified!) at the way that the
authors illustrated mesokurtosis, leptokurtosis and platykurtosis with
graphs of the standard Normal, a Normal with var < 1, and a Normal with var
>1.There is more, much more!
More generally, it was not much good at explaining the why, only the how
I have no objection to stats books appearing for the non-mathematician which
deliberately hide /avoid the "pain" of the mathematics, but I expect the
authors to understand the pain.
Quentin
Dr Quentin L Burrell
Isle of Man International Business School
The Nunnery
Old Castletown Road
Douglas IM2 1QB
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-----Original Message-----
From: A UK-based worldwide e-mail broadcast system mailing list
[mailto:[log in to unmask]]On Behalf Of Irene Stratton
Sent: 29 October 2003 15:54
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Is anyone else as depressed by this book title as I am?
I saw this book in the local branch of Borders:-
Statistics Without Maths for Psychology with Spss 11.0 for Windows
Student Version
Dancey
Price: £41.98
It was in the psychology section, but still, I found it worrying and
depressing. What is 'Statistics Without Maths'? I always thought Maths
was at the centre of statistics...... I thought my qualifications in
Pure Maths actually helped. Maybe I am just missing something here.
Irene
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