Deborah Rumsey

I bought Statistics for Dummies to help with the statistical portion of my Master's thesis. Somehow, I had managed to get through college and grad school without taking a statistics course. Unfortunately, this book was almost no help with learning statistics at all. The reason, it isn't intended to help you do statistics; it is intended to help you interpret them. It does a very good job at it's real purpose—helping you make sense of the statistics bandied in the new media.

Journalists tend show more to report on relative risk because they are easy to say and can sound impressive. For example: Say one person per billion in the population at large typically experiences having their brains blow out the back of their head when they sneeze. Now say that two people per billion have that happen when they are filling up their cars with premium fuel, but there is no difference in people who fill up their cars with regular. That means you are 100% more likely to sneeze and blow out the back of your head while filling your car with premium. So you should never use premium fuel! Right?

What journalists would ignore in the previous fallacious scenario is that your actual risk is only two in a billion. But a 100% increase in risk sounds a lot more interesting and scary, doesn't it. Sigh.

The book is very readable and even humorous at times. Humor is a major accomplishment in a subject as dry as this one. One of the most important lessons it teaches is to distrust relative risk comparisons. show less

This is a very solid introduction to statistics. The book focuses as much on interpreting statistics presented by others (researchers, news media, salespeople, etc.) as it does on introducing the reader to conducting their own basic statistical research.

A concise and accessible introduction to statistics, a subject that has intimidated me ever since I nearly failed it in college. I especially liked the abundance of real-world examples and how clearly everything was defined, including formulas which are usually my least favorite to learn. Statistics still bores and puts me to sleep sometimes, but less so than before and I no longer fear it as I once did!

There is only one thing I can't agree with Deborah Rumsey on: this book is either not for dummies or only one for extremely intelligent dummies. I had to skip several chapters because I was just too stupid to understand them. But the little I did grasp was completely worth the effort.