Probability and Statistical Inference (7th Edition)
Manufacturer: Prentice Hall
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List Price:$133.33
Our Price:$133.33
Authors: -
Robert V Hogg
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Elliot A. Tanis
Description:
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Reviews:
pretty good introduction to stats
I'm guessing that when many people review a seemingly well written statistics book negatively, it's because they hate statistics and are blaming it on the book! This is actually a pretty good introductory statistics book, that's appropriate for an upper level undergraduate stats class, which is where I used it as an undergraduate. You might even call it an intermediate level stats book, since some of the proofs and concepts aren't exactly a cake walk. Things could be explained a bit better, however, and some of the examples and proofs are a bit hard to follow. Nonetheless, I think it's pretty good for building a foundation in stats. A book that explains stats concepts in an easy to understand fashion is Motulsky's Intuitive Biostatistics.
New To Probability/Stats? Get Another Book NOW!
Being with calculation I, II
A Stat Book for Math Majors
As a Mathematics major, I found this book to be helpful on two conditions: (a.) You have a competent professor teaching the material. (b.) You have had at least Calculus III.
Hogg and Tanis, as other reviewers have stated, make liberal use or reference to concepts covered in calculus courses: partial derivatives, double integrals, McLauren/Taylor Series etc. If these two conditions have not been met, this would be a terrible book to start with. If you are a Math Major or engineering student, by all means dive right in.
Usable
This book provides an introduction to the theory of probability and statistics for advanced undergraduate math students. Topics covered include basic concepts of probability (enumeration techniques, Baye's Theorem), discrete probability distributions, continuous probability distributions, multivariate distributions, the Normal Distribution, confidence intervals, and significance testing. Each chapter is broken up into sections, and each section includes practice exercises. More advanced optional sections are marked with asterisks. Many exercises require skills in both single and multi-variable calculus. End material includes brief reviews of set theory, limits, infinite series, integration, and multivariate calculus, references, standard probability tables, answers to odd-numbered exercises, and an index.
Overall, I found the text less than transparent. In the beginning chapters, I found myself scratching my head after reading the discussion of the theory, and then struggling through the examples to see what was meant, taking notes in the text about which numbers in the examples referred to which parts of the theoretical discussion. As I got further along in the text, I found it more and more difficult to make sense of, especially since the authors tend to dive directly into the theory and proofs without giving an indication first of which direction they are heading and why, or even what problem the theory will eventually address. By the end of the book, although I was reading the text, I understood practically nothing, and had to rely on classroom lectures to even deduce what topic had been covered in the text. While I'm not the best math student, I have had 5 semesters of calculus, and I am getting an A in the stats course for which this text was assigned, so it may not just be me--the text is simply obtuse. But at least typos are at a minimum, and the summaries of formulas for distributions, confidence intervals, and significance tests that appear inside the front and back cover are conveniently placed and quite useful. If you're looking for a text for an advanced stats class for undergrads, this may do, but most students will need a lot of hand-holding in order to get them through it.
Avoid this book if you can
That was my first book in the probability and me sorrow to say that
time waste has been one total. It is too much colorfuly and with the
lotteries of the insignificant examples but of no "for the
mathematics" real, the relative similar spoon that feeds the readers
rather than that it generates the probability like interesting object.
The greater part of the problems is insignificant in nature and the
greater part of the concepts is also convulated. They would not have
given to stars, mine recommends is to avoid this book if you can.
As reference text, it 's OK!
Although the fact the conten of the freed material is extremely
teoretico with a lot little resolving and the proposed practices, the
author obtains the relative operation: to the present we one excellent
presentation of the main characteristic of this discipline fabulous.
Suggested especially for teaching and deeply interested the technical
assistants of the university from the object.
Pretty confusing
I have used this book in a course of mathematics of the 300 levels.
Before taken of the this code category, I had taken 2 course applies
you of enterprise statistics. However, many you leave of this book
were much to confusionare in spite of the fact that I was not
completely unaware of of statistics. Some of "the simpler" concepts
than statistics are rendered difficult uselessly from the authors. The
used notations are not identified well or at all and the authors
stretch to jump the points when he resolves the problems. I have taken
to 3 codes category of calculation however the calculation used in
this book has confused me, still the points jump authors to you and it
has not explained that what was making. I know that the handbook a lot
of for the mathematics are not much luminosity but this is defective
has never read. Perhaps it approves of for the greater ones of for the
mathematics, but not for the rest of we!
Not as Good as the 6th Edition!
I am currently teaching statistics (using a different textbook) and have been using the 6th edition of Hogg/Tanis as a reference. In my opinion, this is a pretty good text for someone who A) already has some idea of what statistics is all about and B) has a thorough understanding of calculus, which Hogg/Tanis make liberal use of. For someone who likes and understands calculus,
this is a much better introductory text than those that studiously avoid any mention of higher level mathematics. I give the 6th edition a 5-star rating based on the sections I've looked at so far.
With that said, I'm sorry to report that the 7th edition is not as good as the 6th. The authors have re-organized the material "for better logical organization", but in the process have lost some pedagogical clarity. For example, the relatively important student's t distribution has been relegated to an obscure example buried in a new chapter on the normal distribution, and the formerly excellent explanation of how this is derived is gone.
And speaking of "The Normal Distribution" chapter, do I really want all things normal relegated to a separate chapter? The pervasive use and importance of this distribution in statistics makes me think that it might be better to let the normal distribution pop up whenever it needs to be invoked, as was the case in the 6th edition. Including a "Sampling Distribution Theory" chapter (as was done in the 6th edition) makes a lot more sense than what they've done now. The new chapter on Bayesian Methods is short, and not terribly useful. Relegating this material to section 9.5 in a chapter on "Theory of Statistical Inference", as was done in the 6th edition was a much better decision.
The section on "Exploratory Data Analysis" (histograms and stemplots) has been moved from an introductory chapter (which no longer exists) to the chapter on "Continuous-Type Data". How does this make any sense? And yes, it is most definately a good idea to have an introductory chapter which talks about basic concepts and data visualizations. In the 7th edition, the mean, median, and standard deviation are first mentioned in chapter 2.
Finally, why on earth do authors think that randomly adding color to a textbook and widening the pages to allow for giant margins on every page makes a text more readable/useful when in fact just the opposite is the case? The wide margins add nothing and make the book both heavier and more unwieldy, and the blue section headings and graphs give it the feel of a junior high school algebra text. The compact elegance of the 6th edition stands in stark contrast to the large and comparatively garish 7th edition.
This revision has all the feel of something that was driven strictly by textbook marketing concerns and has nothing to do with either pedagogy or an interest in producing a excellent statistics book.
My advice? If you're looking for something for self-study or reference, get the 6th edition instead. It's better, and you can get a used copy on Amazon for next to nothing, since the lemmings have all switched to using the 7th edition and there are a lot of unwanted copies of the 6th floating around.
The nonsense of constantly producing new (and often inferior) editions of textbooks just so that publishers can make more money needs to be nipped in the bud.
Probability and Statistical Inference
I had to buy this for a class b/c Hogg & Tanis renumbered the problems (same problems, but put different numbers on them) this was done so they could sell another edition! Other than that nothing really has changed, good money making technique though.
a worthy revision
The seventh edition of this handbook represents one great review of
this old favorite: understanding separated it on the normal
distribution and a new one understood it on statistics bayesian.
Lotteries of new problems also. It seems as a lot the reviews comes
from the bitter students... yes, a course that using this text demands
for the mathematics the a lot, but that one is the only sense that you
can completely understand the probability and statistics!
Worst Math Book ever
This is the worst math book ever written. It does not have very descriptive solutions, nor is there a solutions manual that can be purchased. Don't take a class that uses this textbook unless you absolutely have to.
Horrible, Horrible Pedagogy
I very much disagree with the review by Raghu Reddy, who gave this book much too high a rating. I am a senior mathematics major interested in math itself, not applied math such as physics, engineering, et. al.
I weep for other undergraduate students who have been assigned this text as their text, as I have for my two semester, 400-level Prob & Stats I & II courses.
The authors use terms as parts of definitions before those terms have been properly defined, leading to much confusion.
They don't use enough graphs and figures to illustrate their arguments (please remember that a picture can be worth 1000 words). The text has a poor typeface and the pages are too small making it a dense and unfriendly read.
The text seems to not have been updated since its 1977 copyright. Probability and Statistics are living fields (as opposed to, say, Calculus I's treatment of basic derivatives and integrals) and as such the texts used to instruct on these fields need to be regularly updated to reflect new insights on core concepts as well as state of the art pedagological methods. In the 21st Century the format and delivery are simply unacceptable.
The authors commit the cardinal sin of a mathematical text by giving an example -- EXAMPLE -- problem in words or mathematical notation and then supplying the answer, filling in the missing steps between notation and answer with handwaving, "obviously", "it is clear", or worse: just assuming you can make the jump.
Now, if you are a math genius and aced your way to this senior year class you might a) be able to laboriously wade your way through this dense, tear-jerking (not in a good way) text, b) already know most of the first semester stuff through intuition and outside reading, and/or c) still be a virgin. For the rest of us mere mortals please consider that we struggle through our classes, need all the help we can get, and look forward to learning until socially-retarded instructors and/or horrible texts stop us in our tracks.
A Plea To College Instructors:
Please, please, please (read those three words again!) realize we students spend one to two hours with you and the next two to twenty-three with our text. If you supply us with a text as horrible as this you are insulting us as human beings and are unconsiously whipping yourself as you wonder why we can't understand the basic issues at hand. For the love of the axiomatic systems (or the deity of your choice) pick one of the 5-star rated books here at Amazon as your text. Five stars means your students are learning and enjoying their learing.
--
Regards,
Christiaan
Not for application oriented. Better suited for math majors
I disagree with others on this one. The book is perhaps a little dry for non-mathematically oriented. If you are a math major this book will work out fine.
Sometimes however, some of us who start out as math majors at the undergrad level will come to a point where we realize pure math is no longer our forte. I suppose that is when applied fields like engineering, economics or finance start looking more promising than mathematics.
This distinction is however an important one. If you are into applied fields, the emphasis is on learning what methods to use and being able to solve the equations well. Theories, proofs and analysis are often nice and may be even elegant. But most likely they are an over kill. Tools and techniques are what are going to save the day. If you find yourself in this group, this book is not an easy read. I think there are excellent alternatives for those looking for books with better examples, illustrations etc.,
I am planning to continue in math/statistics beyond college level. So far I have not found too many things to complain about this book. It does a pretty good job of explaining the theory part without attempting to skip over the hard sections. That is why I do not think it deserves the harsh ratings it has received from other readers.
The authors acknowledge that much when they say that this book is useful when used as a text for a two semester long course even for math majors.
Hope this helps. Cheers
The WORST prob & stats book !!
I think very more best after that reading other reviews of this book -
they are not that only or reason for this. This book is much devoid
one. Particularly for the principianti of the student not graduated.
not fit for teaching
While study statistics with this thougth of the book the defect of a
gene or something because I could not have a lot meant of the object.
Today I know that the book is conceptually wrong. The book is attacked
basically in the 1930' s, ignoring the important innovations from
Shannon, Kolmogorov and others. The fundamental concepts appreciate
the entropy, specific chance and the typicallity it lacks completely.
Still, the book is influenced heavy towards the hypothesis that
examines, with little pointing out of statistics bayesian. From a
pedagogical point of view it must dirsi that the statistical concepts
are emerged historically and more best is understood once disposed in
the context of the problems originates them. This book does not make
that one at all.
average textbook, but sketchy in places
For the most part this textbook provided a good foundation for the study of probability and statistics. Some of the examples lacked a necessary level of detail and left me wondering how they got from point A to point B (especially in the second half of the text). Of course, unless you're just buying this book for self knowledge you probably don't have a choice on whether or not to buy it.
a (yawn) mechanical approach to mathematics
I have studied the first 8 understood them of this book instead
assisting to the conference of the student not graduated. That was an
error. Tanis
thorough but very confusing and badly written
I taught prob/stat from 99-02. The first year we used Tanis and Hogg 5th, the second 6th Edition, and the last two semesters were the current Larsen and Marx (much nicer IMO, at least on the readability and organization factor). I felt the 6th was a step backwards from the 5th in terms of organization and the 5th wasn't great for that. In fact, the 6th felt a lot more like the old 3rd edition I had when I was taking prob/stat for the very first time. In my experience, many of the flaws that other reviewers have noted are present in this book:-Confusing transitions between theorems and examples in the main text, with theorems and examples not clearly delineated from surrounding text (particularly where they end), making it hard to use the book for reference as you work problems;
-Examples that have too many steps skipped;
-Problems which are often much more difficult than the examples in the text (that said, many of the problems in T&H are quite good, which I suspect explains the longevity of it as a text, well that, simple inertia among profs who have their lectures already written, and the publisher's sales staff :).
*I* could use it as a reference as it does cover a lot of topics pretty well. So what. If I'm teaching the material I *better* have a mastery over the material in the book! Student have got to be able to use it and they don't have that mastery. Bad organization simply obscures the material which, while not difficult from a straight mathematical standpoint, IS pretty difficulty conceptually IME.
THIS BOOK DOES NOT HELP
All in this book it is a lot little clear, with the examples vague.
The text is for the 98% mathematics and 2%English that Marches
difficult it affinchè the students comprise that what is igniting.
Awful
If this is the 6th edition, I don't want to see the 1st edition! This book takes the simplest concepts and makes them convoluted and confusing; it lacks proper organization and repeats similar concepts chapter after chapter.
Please, if you are a professor looking at using this book to teach a class, consider others. I don't understand why it is so popular.
Awful
If this is the 6th edition, I don't want to see the 1st edition! This book takes the simplest concepts and makes them convoluted and confusing; it lacks proper organization and repeats similar concepts chapter after chapter.
Please, if you are a professor looking at using this book to teach a class, consider others. I don't understand why it is so popular.
I am fighting with this book
I bought this book because it is our text book. At first I read it closely to understand the content. But I found it keeps confusing me by so much discussion that leads to nothing. The author seems to avoid concise and precise style of relation.
I am fighting with this book
I bought this book because it is our text book. At first I read it closely to understand the content. But I found it keeps confusing me by so much discussion that leads to nothing. The author seems to avoid concise and precise style of relation.
Don't buy this book!
There are good books on the probability and the illazione statistics.
That is not one of they! If been trying for something - it tries the
authors like James T. McClave or P. George Benson. James McClave has
written some good books in this zone. The examples are HARD TO FOLLOW.
Not there is development of the concepts. The producer does not seem
to have some idea like explaining or supplying the examples. THAT Is
not a BOOK THAT NORMAL PEOPLE CAN UNDERSTAND! IF APPRECIATE FOR The
MATHEMATICS Or YOU WANTED TO UNDERSTAND FOR The MATHEMATICS - IT DOES
NOT BUY THIS BOOK! It supplies an example of ché book would not have
to be similar!
mediocre text not worth the money
I have not never possessed some other witnesses on the probability and
statistics, but this is good. The concepts matemati us of bottom are
not difficult, but they are introduces in a way much poor one to you.
I must often read to a section several times to understand as the
authors move from the theory towards the specific examples, I seem to
omit the points that are not before the time intuiti you to the
student (me). Then, once that task the undestand of the ideas
sufficiently to move towards the practices to the extremity of the
section, I find that the similar ones often ask the reader to resolve
the problems of which to mala pain (or times for nothing) they have
been explains in the text... relative A LOT to you aggrevating. This
text, joined with a prof. terrible has made Prob-Condizione that a
real incubus... if wished to time a lot and to the frustration of the
safe same you, it obtains an other book, relative nearly garaunteed
for better being.....
Partial review...
This critic thinks coercive in order to comment after to have only
completed with understood it the 5. Why? Since, like the book of an
other critic, this "road had fallen to part" to half through the job
of the semestre! The sections have become unglued from the thorn of
the book. Since this critic does not misuse the books, one could doubt
that the prentice Corridor bought the inferior glue. The price prize
of the book demands a sturdier product. Otherwise, the plentiful
practices of the variation difficulty up to now contain the larger
good of the text (). More to follow to the conclusion of the next
semestre!
A good book on statistical inference
This is a wonderful book to introduce Probability and Statistical Inference to students with some background in calculus. The contents of the book start with summary and display of data, then gradually move to estimation, hypothesis testing, linear model and non-parametric methods. Several lists of distributions, confidence intervals and tests of hypothesis are given in the book. Many interesting examples are chosen to introduce some abstract concepts in probability and statistics. This book is not only useful as a text book but also useful as a reference book for further study.
good, but at a price
this is a fair book. It is being used here as a lower level graduate text. There are few illustrations and pictures, and the reading is usually dry. My book fell apart within 3 weeks! The examples are good and virtually every important result is proved. Good book, with problems.
Illogic organization and non-intuitive explanation
i'm not sure whether it's useful as a reference, but it's far from being a good textbook. obviously the authors didn't care to explain anything clearly. all they wanted was to write down all the relevant formulas to finish their book. no intuition is given at all. it's a pain to read and i would recommend both instructors and students NOT to use this book.
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