I cannot recommend a book more highly than this!
To overcome the boring, confusing instruction you received in college or high school about statistics you NEED this book.
Never has math been so easy.
Written with humor and the "picture is worth a thousand words" style of cartoon books, you'll get the message.
And remember 5 out of 4 people have trouble with statistics.

Cartoons definitely make the subject of statistics seem less-intimidating. I bought this book for self-study and found it difficult to follow. Though the cartoons made me smile at times, I was unhappy with the lack of material substance. For instance, equations and topics are thrown out there with little explanation on how they were derived. On multiple occasions, I looked for supporting information that wasn't there. Ultimately, I cannot recommend Cartoon Guide to Statistics. I am, however, finding success with a more expensive book, take a look: Statistics for People Who (Think They) Hate Statistics

Not as easy to understand as I thought it would be based on the title.

I wrote a short review of this book previously for Amazon and my opinions have not changed very much. However, Gonick deserves credit for coauthoring his cartoon books with experts in the field. This way he avoids mistakes and brings out the important messages that, in the case of this book, a statistician would want to teach his students.
Recently, I used the cartoons on p-values to help another statistician with a presentation on p-values for an audience of medical researchers. I found the relevant cartoons to be humorous and very instructive.

Also, I discovered that in addition to the standard topics of estimation, hypothesis testing, regression, correlation and analysis of variance, Chapter 12, simply titled "Conclusion" has a brief description of many advanced topics, particularly in multivariate analysis.

Multivariate topics include Chernoff faces, cluster analysis, factor analysis and discriminant analysis. Other advanced topics mentioned are random walks, time series analysis, image analysis and even resampling (bootstrap, jackknife and randomization).

Each is described with a single cartoon. This reminds me to again warn that these cartoons alone cannot do justice to the various topics being taught. However, careful selection and placement into the context of a course can bring home important points to students better than just conventional teaching methods. I wouldn't hesitate to use this material to supplement and liven up an introductory statistics course.

The bibliography at the end provides a number of very fine introductory texts and other topics and software that could interest the general public (also done in the cartoon fashion of Gonick).

this is great as a refresher and a road map of what to study in-depth.

This book is so cool! It makes the topic clear and fun at the same time.

I have a B.S. (from a school you haven't heard of) and an M.S. (from one you have) in mathematics, and I teach math, but probability and statistics was my _worst_ undergraduate math class (I avoided it in grad school). I came across this book, and I bought it on a chance. I'm sorry to say, it was wasted money...

1) The cartoons at best merely illustrate points made in the text; at worst they are irrelevant interruptions. For example, here we have a cartoon of the reader in a straightjacket after the text mentions calculus. And there's a cartoon of a man rolling dice. This sort of stuff does not advance the discussion.

2) The cartoon format reduces the space available for text. The discussion is therefore abbreviated and compressed; points are made once only, without examples, and often after skipping important steps. I think it's _more_ difficult than a standard textbook.

3) There are no exercises! Who ever heard of a math book without exercises? We learn by doing, I always tell my students, not by just reading or listening.

I think this book may be useful to a former student of statistics who wants a review but I can't think of anyone else who would get much out of it.

Whenever I try reading this book my eyes just gloss over. It's extremely dry material with cartoons added to every page to make it seem as if it'll be entertaining and easy to learn from but IMO it's neither. On the contrary, it would probably be best as a reference book. Almost every page has a new equation or symbol on it and I rarely felt that they were adequately discussed. "What does it do? When is it useful? What does it mean if the value is high/low?" are questions I constantly asked myself and the book doesn't take the time to answer.

Some people will complain that the book is difficult and/ or uninteresting. To this I say, "Dude, it's statistics! Mr. Gonick makes the best of a difficult subject. This is certainly not less friendly than your stats text book." If you want an easy laugh, get a Get Fuzzy compilation, if you want a different and more intuitive approach to statistics, this is your best bet.

My MBA program suggested this book to all incoming first years. In reading it so far, it outlines the concepts well, but doesn't give enough opportunity to practice them and get comfortable with them. I am not getting very much out of it, but I may use it as a resource when I am taking my actual stats class.

Larry Gonick was very successful in describing statistical terms in a funny and accessible way. The book covers a wide range of topics, and it gives all the background necessary to understand most statistical concepts.

When I read it, I already had a basic knowledge of statistics, but it did not make the book boring to me. The way Gonick presents the subjects is a good revision, and it brought a few smiles to my face.

THIS BOOK IS HELPFUL. IT IS WORTH THE MONEY!

For someone who is new to probability theories and statistics, you might consider something else more basic and introductory. I've had classes in probability and number theories in college. This book stumped me. It could be retitled: Cartoons for Statisticians. Definitely not a book for beginners as it may have been intended.

Stats isn't an easy thing to learn, but the Cartoon Guide to Stats is the easiest way to learn the basics. In particular it makes hypothesis testing clear. Hypothesis testing is often one of the more difficult areas for new stats students to understand.

You can't get rid of your stats textbook (not enough problems to work), but it will help you visualize what is going on. I recommend it on its own or as a supplement to a regular textbook.

This book is, in fact, full of cartoons but, even so, is actually a useful statistics book. I am a chemist who has long forgotten her math and this book was suggested to me by a co-worker who was given the book (earlier edition) by her sister (a medical person). So, this book has a long history of being helpful to those of us in technical fields who are not math experts but who need occasional help with stats.

this is a book good for beginners to basic statistics. information and concepts were explained through interesting cartoons and daily examples. recommended for beginners to basic statistics!

I am a psychology professor who teaches statistics for the behavioral sciences. Students are always so terrified coming into my class, I wanted to find something that would make statistics more accessible and less scary. So I bought the "Cartoon Guide to Statistics."

I'll give you the bottom line right away: its handling of certain topics is better than others, but on the whole it is decently well done. While I might xerox some pages and hand them out to my students here and there, the text itself is not significantly clearer than what one might read in any other textbooks on statistics. The cartoons, if anything, can be distracting, as they are not particularly funny or often well-related to the material being covered. I think they serve more as a measure of reassurance than anything else: if the book has cartoons in it, the topic can't be that scary.

To be fair, this book covers *mathematical statistics* rather than what we use more often in psychological research. As a result, it spends a great deal of time on probability theory, culminating in the coverage of t-tests. The text I regularly use, in contrast, has only enough probability to make comprehensible the use of p-values in analyses, and goes all the way through factorial and repeated measures ANOVAS, chi-squares, and nonparametric tests.

So... my overall feeling is "meh." It's probably a better book for someone in the math department taking their first statistics class than anything else, and they would do well to remember that the cartoons, while comforting, do not render the material any easier to understand.

My recommendation for text would be Chris Spatz's 'Tales of Distributions'... he does a stellar job of explaining the analyses in easy-to-understand terms with entertaining prose and plenty of examples.

I like many of Larry Gonick's "Cartoon Guide to..." series of books, this one included. It seems to irritate some because it has too much detail, and irritate others because of its lack of detail. Some like it because it is very visual-based, and others complain because it doesn't "teach" you statistics (no problem solving).

I guess this book is successful.

Cartoon Guide to Statistics is an entertaining overview of statistics. At the end, you will not be able to calculate a chi-squared. You will not become a champion of analysis of variance. You should be able to calculate a mean (but didn't you do this in fourth grade?), and understand variance.

Need to learn how to do statistics? Take a stats course, and do the homework. Want a refresher of basic concepts? Read this book. Having difficulty with the basic concepts? This book should help. Another book halfway between this one and a "real" stats text, for the beginner, is Statistics Without Tears: A Primer for Non Mathematicians, by Derek Rowntree, also found through Amazon.com.

Dear Reader,

I am a former stdent of Dr. W. Smith. His book and class are both enjoyable and informative.

Enjoy,

JK

I bought this book after reading the reviews here on amazon.Having never done statistics before,this sounded like a great buy.On to my complaints.This book is way to brief on the topics.Descriptive statistics,the foundation of statistics is only given 10 pages,a lot of which is cartoons and not much explanation.After i finished reading the chapter it didn't feel complete.The next chapter which deals with probability did not explain it well,a topic that tortures students,this should have been written with more care and detail.After this things start to heat up because the authors whip out out the dreaded symbols and some calculus which had me lost.The inferential statistics part of the book i thought was explained well but there is too much equations that isn't explained.Having said all this i still think its a good book but definitely not for newcomers to the subject.I loved the use of the cartoons which i thought was done really great,pictures really help you understand the topic better.If the authors explain in more detail alongside with those great pictures and release an updated version of the book i will be one of the first people to buy it.I recommend this book to people who have already learned statistics but need a refresher and also as a supplementary book.

The idea of teaching something like statistics by using cartoons is very attractive, however it falls far short of what the typical reader is expecting. The cartoons in "The Cartoon Guide to Statistics" are very well drawn and are humorous and witty. But, since so much page space must be given to the cartoons, there is insufficient text to explain the concepts. Very frequently, you will read "It's not hard to see that..." right before a formula with no other help as to how we arrived at this. For those hoping for a good review of statistics and probability to brush up or learn for the first time, "The Complete Idiot's Guide to Statistics" is far superior. It fully explains all of the concepts and how various formulas are derived with easy to follow examples. The content is almost identical and you will end up with a much better grasp of the subject.

As many other have noted, this is a good primer on a wide variety of statistical tools presented in a unique format. It should help any student of statistics, mathematically challenged working professionals, or non-fiction skeptics get a good overview and understanding of some difficult statistical concepts. Example data sets are small so as not to confuse with overwhelming amounts of data. A one star hit from me for a couple of reasons. 1. I did have a little trouble with meaning on occasion as grammatical errors do force one to pause here and there to try and figure out what the author is trying to say. A missing comma makes a huge difference in meaning. 2. The book is in desperate need of an update (copyright is 1993). Most examples are calculated in long form. Fine for understanding the mechanics and the author does make one or two references to Minitab; however, the book needs a bit of a makeover with more frequent reference to very commonly available statistical software packages. Minitab is powerful but expensive. Most people have Excel which can be easily utilized for most basic to intermediate statistical needs.

That said, the author does keep it interesting with factoids peppered throughout. The main concepts are highlighted well with good examples. The end of the book provides short descriptions of lesser used but still very important concepts. Chapter ten on "Experimental Design" is really more of a tease then anything else. Fair enough because "Design of Experiments" (DOE) would have been tough to fully explore in this format anyway. Overall this book is well done and provides clear explanation of what many might consider difficult to understand concepts found in a traditional statistics textbook.

I took statistics in college. As soon as I was finished with the course I forgot everything about it as quickly as I could, figuring that I would never need that knowledge again. Well I was wrong.

This book is great.

First its the opposite of wordy. Most math books are far too wordy.

Second the concepts are presented in a clear manner with simple examples.

Third the cartoons are funny but don't detract from the learning.

I wish I had this book the first time I took statistics in college. Very nice as a refresher or to help students learn statistics the first time.

Bottom line if more math books looked like this people probably would not be so afraid of math. Many math textbooks are wordy and do not explain things well, and often go off on a rant on particular concept that the student misses the big picture of what they are tying to study. Well worth the money.

"The Cartoon Guide to Statistics" by Larry Gonick and Woollcott Smith was published in 1993. This book is a good introductory level look at Statistics. The authors cover what Statistics is, what the history of the subject is, and a look at some theories, terms, and applications of the subject.

The weakness of the book is that there are a lot of formulas given, and not enough discussion of the formulas, so one would need to use other statistics texts to supplement the material, so this book cannot stand alone in that respect. On the other hand, if one is just trying to get an overview, there is a lot to skip over. The authors do make fun of the formulas, and the amount of math so those that are looking for an overview may enjoy the humorous presentation. There is also a lot to do with the subject that the book covers. It does cover probabilities, but when it comes to distributions it really focuses on Standard Normal distributions. I don't believe it ever mentions Uniform, Poisson, or other types of distributions which most statistic courses do cover.

The best part of the book is the examples, some of which are carried through for several chapters to help the reader better understand the subject. Although, even with the examples they are a bit inconsistent in how complete they are. For example, in one case they started to discuss the use of statistics to compare the salaries of male and female employees in the same job, but they never completed the discussion. The examples of racial bias in jury selection, and the gas mileage comparison of two different types of gas are much better. This is a decent book, but not up to the level of Gonick's excellent "Cartoon History of the Universe" series, and not strong enough to give it more than three stars.

This book is a good introductory level look at Statistics. The authors cover what the subject of Statistics is, the history of Statistics, some of the theories and terms, and also shows some applications of the subject.

The weakness of the book is that there are a lot of formulas given and not enough discussion of how those formulas are derived, so one would need to use other statistics texts to supplement the material. Thus this book cannot stand alone. On the other hand, if one is just trying to get an overview of the subject, then there is a lot to skip over. The authors do make a humorous presentation of the material, so those that are looking for an overview may find this a more enjoyable introduction to the subject.

There is also a lot to do with Statistics that the book does not mention. It does cover probabilities, but when it comes to distributions it focuses only on Standard Normal distributions. I don't believe it ever mentions Uniform, Poisson, or other types of distributions which most Statistics courses cover.

The best part of the book is the examples, some of which are carried through for several chapters to help the reader better understand the subject. Although, even with the examples they are a bit inconsistent in their presentation. For example, in one case they started to discuss the use of statistics to compare the salaries of male and female employees in the same job, but they never complete the discussion. The examples of racial bias in jury selection, and the gas mileage comparison of two different types of gas are much more complete.

This is a decent book, but not up to the level of Gonick's excellent "Cartoon History of the Universe" series, and not strong enough to give it more than three stars.

If you want to learn complicated things like statistics, but are feeling quite overwhelmed by the complexity, I highly recommend you learn visually from a book like this. Larry has a great sense of humor and is a creative genius.

Zev Saftlas, Author of Motivation That Works: How to Get Motivated and Stay Motivated

This is a delightful book that explains the fundamentals of statistics very well. Relying more on images rather than formulas, the authors manage to include all of the necessary statistics formulas without appearing to do so. The cartoons are very well drawn, with some very humorous situations being described. In terms of a positive combination of explaining statistics in a non-threatening way, it is the best that I have seen. I am teaching basic statistics for the first time in fifteen years this summer, and I will recommend it to any student who is having difficulty.

This is one of the best texts for Probability and Statistics that I've ever read (and I've read more than my share). With a light tone and clever illustrations, Gonick & Smith cover about two semesters worth of material. They stop just after introducing regression analysis (which is a pity because I didn't really understand statistics until I learned and used regressions).

I wish I'd found this book back when I was still in school. I would have done much better in my statistics classes.

As a professor who has taught both undergraduate and graduate level statistics classes, I have recommended this book to students as a supplement to the basic texts I use in class. Several students have told me that this book really helped them understand basic statistical concepts. Let's face it: statistics is boring for most students. Humor can help them make the leap from fear to understanding. This book is a great help!

As a professor who teaches both undergraduate and graduate level statistics classes, I recommend this book to my students as a supplement to the basic texts I use in class. Several students have told me that this book really helped them understand basic statistical concepts. Let's face it: statistics is boring for most students. Humor can help students make the leap from fear to understanding. This book is a great help!

Sometimes using the cartoon style is a way to cover up a lack of clear understanding with humor, but in this case the authors have succeeded in covering the topics for a non-technical person to grasp key ideas in statistics without burdening them with the theory. Great introductory text, but not deep enough for the mathematically inclined to get under the hood. But then again, there are plenty of other books for that purpose.

I'm smart with a pathetic mathematical background. This introduction to statistics is meant for people like me. The material is hard, but it's broken down into digestible portions, moves from easy to harder, and is explained carefully and thoroughly. My husband (smart with a great mathematical background) examined it and approved--he said nothing was left out or mis-explained. Plus, the cartoons really help comprehension and mood.

I wrote a short review of this book previously for Amazon and my opinions have not changed very much. However, Gonick deserves credit for coauthoring his cartoon books with experts in the field. This way he avoids mistakes and brings out the important messages that, in the case of this book, a statistician would want to teach his students.

Recently, I used the cartoons on p-values to help another statistician with a presentation on p-values for an audience of medical researchers. I found the relevant cartoons to be humorous and very instructive.

Also, I discovered that in addition to the standard topics of estimation, hypothesis testing, regression, correlation and analysis of variance, Chapter 12, simply titled "Conclusion" has a brief description of many advanced topics, particularly in multivariate analysis.

Multivariate topics include Chernoff faces, cluster analysis, factor analysis and discriminant analysis. Other advanced topics mentioned are random walks, time series analysis, image analysis and even resampling (bootstrap, jackknife and randomization).

Each is described with a single cartoon. This reminds me to again warn that these cartoons alone cannot do justice to the various topics being taught. However, careful selection and placement into the context of a course can bring home important points to students better than just conventional teaching methods. I wouldn't hesitate to use this material to supplement and liven up an introductory statistics course.

The bibliography at the end provides a number of very fine introductory texts and other topics and software that could interest the general public (also done in the cartoon fashion of Gonick).

I liked the book a lot. The cartoons accomplish exactly what they were meant to accomplish--to make the book an entertaining read and thus to facilitate the study of statistics. The characters of de Mere and the guy with a chronic math phobia are so funny that more than once I laughed out loud, looking at them. Difficult statistical concepts are not explained in great detail, so this book should be supplemented by a more conceptually-oriented book to help the beginner. But as a tool for review, this book is perfect for intermediate users.

Have you ever chuckled while reading your mathbook? Ever laughed out loud while crunching numbers? Don't worry--neither had I until I read this book. And any book that makes me smile when I'm doing math has got to be a winner.

Yes, Gonick has done it again. I bought the CG-genetics a while back, and loved it. So when I went hunting for a good 'refresher' stats book, I picked up this one.

I wasn't disappointed. Gonick (et al) has great talent for presenting information in a way that almost fools you into thinking you're not learning, but rather, having fun. And although this book wasn't as "easy" to get into as his Genetics book, I believe it's because I'm less familiar with this subject.

Careful though--as others have mentioned, you can't be fooled into thinking this book is THE way to learn statistics. You have to be pretty comfortable with algebra, and pretty determined to read through the book in order to take anything away from it. And don't try this book as a stand-alone or you'll end up with the same frustration you'd have with a college textbook.

With no training in statistics, I took on some statistical work at my firm three years ago, and that aspect of my job has grown considerably. Of the many introductory guides to statistics I've looked at, this is the only one I've read through--and in three days! The authors do a surprisingly good job of conveying the basic concepts--and the practical value--of statistics in a book that takes only 4-5 hours to read and is fun to boot. It established that the methods I've been using in Excel are valid and encouraged me to learn more. In its very different way, it's as good as Edward R. Tufte's classics on visual and statistical thinking (and it's a lot less expensive). Enjoy!

As a statistician and instructor I commonly teach statistical methods to non-statisticians. After giving a 20 lecture course at a medical device company, it was suggested to me that I try to teach it like Gonick... Many of the cartoons are instuctive and can be useful in lectures that deal with the topics described but no course should be based solely on this book! The cartoons are also very useful to liven up statistical lectures. See my later review for an example of how I used the cartoons on p-values.

This text does touch on many new and important topics and covers them in a reasonably accurate and light way. It is really very good at livening up statistical lectures or to supplement course materials. This is particularly helpful for those who are afraid of mathematics and/or statistics.

Statistics is a very difficult subject both to learn and teach. I wish I'd discovered this book after I'd been through the first formal class--except it wasn't written then. :) Well anyway, the CGtS is a useful book and I've recommended it to many people, all of whom got a fair amount of mileage from it. You certainly need further references, but the examples are lucid and the silly cartoons help keep people from getting too overwhelmed by seriousness. I also like the fact that the authors go through some of the history of statistics, as the subject is much more comprehensible if you know why people did what they did.

Someone mentioned getting SPSS--this is, IMO, a terrible way to learn the topic. Packages should come AFTER understanding, not the other way around. If you want a computer program to help out, use a spreadsheet.

I graduated with an Engineering Degree having taken three statistics classes in College, getting solid B's in each. Yet after being out of school for a while and needing to brush up, I picked up this book and found it very good at reminding me of the major concepts. Excellent book.

Probability theory (uncertainty, error estimates, confidence intervals, "p-values" and the like) take time to understand, and rigorous approaches fail to get the concepts across to the non-mathemetician.

Gonick & Woolcott's Cartoon Guide to Statistics gets the ideas across with a minimum of math, and a maximum of "common sense" & (dare I say it?) intuition. The reader get's a FEEL for Probability and Statistics without violating the rigorous underpinnings of statistical theory.

I've taught Statistics to undergrad and grad students, and have had to teach into stats to Grad Students in 7 week Summer short courses, and I required everybody to buy exactly the same statistics calculator (one of the TI models with a couple chapters devoted to the mechanics of "doing statistics"), Cliff Notes _Statistics_, Darryl Huff's _How_to_Lie_With_Statistics_ (a classic cartoon guide I read decades ago) and Gonick's _Cartoon_Guide_to_Statistics_.

The 4 paperbacks (including the book that comes with the TI calculator) complement each other very well.

If you want to learn Statistics, without the standard Sadistics, I recommend Cliff, Huff, T.I. & Gonick. Enjoy!

Excellent idea but difficult to follow due to the presentation of material. I would not recommend this book for students who are having difficulty understanding basic statistics. Perhaps it would be useful to supplement learning for individuals who possess basic statistical knowledge.

As a teacher of statistics at the college level, I've recommended Gonick and Smith to many students who were struggling with their traditional textbook. It presents an authoritative body of material in a clear and fun manner. It would be a good text for teaching a college statistics course, except that it lacks practice problem sets and examples on how to work problems. If you have an interest in understanding statistics but don't want to take a formal class, this is an excellent resource.

Impressive effort at teaching basic statistics in a humorous and comfortable environment. A pleasure to read. Surprizingly full of hands-on examples and slightly distorted history. If you define education as what is left after the book is back on the shelf, this text is worth 4 semesters of math.