Paul Newbold

Statistics for Business and Economics is a textbook. This is the main issue with reading one of these things; a textbook is written to inform, not to entertain. Therefore, the standards and ideals that one uses to review such a book have to change a bit. This does not mean that the book can not provide enjoyment, just that it is less likely to do so since that was not the authors’ intent.

This is the Seventh Edition of this textbook. This tells me that the book was popular enough to warrant such a decision and that there must have either been changes to the curriculum or to the way the subject is taught. Full disclosure, I know nothing of the twisted web of textbook publishing. I mean, if you wrote well enough in the first six editions, what is the point of another? Thankfully, the authors provide a list of all the changes early on in the text and reasons for their inclusion. Apparently, they needed to provide real-world examples with recent news items and context-specific examples.

In any case, the book is organized well and does contain workable problems. It meets my expectations of what a textbook should be. Each chapter has insights or important definitions in a highlighted box. This box method is also how the book introduces equations, making them easy to find if you are just flipping through. The book has plenty of examples. It also has a CD ROM that contains several additional features. I did not explore these features, but the book describes using some of the software provided to analyze data and make graphs and so on.

I have no complaints with this textbook. It is quite informative and well-done. It is pretty heavy on the whole mathematics section, but it’s a textbook on statistics. What did you expect?… (meer)