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The Cartoon Guide to Statistics Paperback – January 1, 1993
Purchase options and add-ons
- Print length230 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherHarperPerennial
- Publication dateJanuary 1, 1993
- Dimensions7.38 x 0.6 x 9.25 inches
- ISBN-100062731025
- ISBN-13978-0062731029
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Customer Reviews |
4.6 out of 5 stars 88
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4.6 out of 5 stars 379
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4.6 out of 5 stars 392
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4.6 out of 5 stars 253
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4.5 out of 5 stars 699
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4.5 out of 5 stars 259
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Price | $14.89$14.89 | $13.99$13.99 | $15.33$15.33 | $15.29$15.29 | $17.04$17.04 | $11.89$11.89 |
Editorial Reviews
Review
From the Back Cover
Updated version featuring all new material.
If you have ever looked for P-values by shopping at P mart, tried to watch the Bernoulli Trails on "People's Court," or think that the standard deviation is a criminal offense in six states, then you need The Cartoon Guide to Statistics to put you on the road to statistical literacy.
The Cartoon Guide to Statistics covers all the central ideas of modern statistics: the summary and display of data, probability in gambling and medicine, random variables, Bernoulli Trails, the Central Limit Theorem, hypothesis testing, confidence interval estimation, and much more—all explained in simple, clear, and yes, funny illustrations. Never again will you order the Poisson Distribution in a French restaurant!
About the Author
Larry Gonick has been creating comics that explain history, science, math, and other big subjects for more than forty years. His books have sold millions of copies worldwide and have been translated into more than twenty-five languages. He has been a calculus instructor at Harvard (where he earned his BA and MA in mathematics), a Knight Science Journalism Fellow at MIT, and a Montgomery Fellow at Dartmouth College.
Product details
- Publisher : HarperPerennial
- Publication date : January 1, 1993
- Edition : 1st
- Language : English
- Print length : 230 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0062731025
- ISBN-13 : 978-0062731029
- Item Weight : 10.4 ounces
- Dimensions : 7.38 x 0.6 x 9.25 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #52,934 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #32 in Statistics (Books)
- #39 in Probability & Statistics (Books)
- #239 in Study Guides (Books)
- Customer Reviews:
About the authors
Larry Gonick has been creating comics that explain history, science, and other big subjects for more than thirty years, ever since Blood from a Stone: A Cartoon Guide to Tax Reform appeared in 1977. He has been a Knight Science Journalism Fellow at MIT and was staff cartoonist for Muse magazine from 1998 to 2015.
Discover more of the author’s books, see similar authors, read book recommendations and more.
Customer reviews
Customer Reviews, including Product Star Ratings help customers to learn more about the product and decide whether it is the right product for them.
To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. Instead, our system considers things like how recent a review is and if the reviewer bought the item on Amazon. It also analyzed reviews to verify trustworthiness.
Learn more how customers reviews work on AmazonCustomers say
Customers find the book great for learning statistics concepts and appreciate its humorous presentation and clever illustrations. Moreover, the book is entertaining with its fun format, and customers consider it a good value for money. However, customers disagree on the depth of the content, and while some find the cartoons helpful, others find them unhelpful.
AI Generated from the text of customer reviews
Customers find the book great for learning statistical concepts, explaining ideas simply and in a fun way. One customer notes it serves as a good pre-reading for an introductory course, while another mentions it's particularly helpful for math-phobic students.
"Good general purpose book for classroom library. This is a great set of books in cartoon form. Easy to understand. Good condition. Arrived quickly." Read more
"...nerds who think math is kinda cool, are already comfortable with the basic concepts of probability, and are looking for a serious but fun crash-..." Read more
"...For actually learning, I think this book is good if you struggle with basic concepts like standard deviations, z-scores and dice roll probabilities...." Read more
"While not perfect (what book is?), this is a worthwhile treatment of statistics...." Read more
Customers appreciate the book's humorous presentation and clever approach, with one customer noting how it provides comic relief during statistics class.
"I'm in love with this book and I feel like it was written with me in mind, so if your math background and goals are anything like mine, I can't..." Read more
"...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..." Read more
"...job of explaining the analyses in easy-to-understand terms with entertaining prose and plenty of examples." Read more
"...Why? The distribution of humor looks good. Meaning that humor is well distributed throughout this book; highly biased towards good jokes, you may..." Read more
Customers appreciate the visual quality of the book, praising its clever illustrations and creative approach, with one customer noting how the pictures make the numbers easier to understand.
"...Don't expect the jokes to be hilarious, but they're cute enough to keep my attention, and that's HUGE...." Read more
"...The humor is pretty dated but to the point of being quaint, so I can't really fault it, having indeed been amused if not in the intended way...." Read more
"...You go from the basics to multi factor regression in an orderly fashion without any frills. Couldn’t recommend it enough." Read more
"...Seeing these simple, but clever, illustrations makes the numbers much easier to understand, and these days it is helpful and necessary to understand..." Read more
Customers find the book entertaining, noting that the cartoons make it enjoyable to read and appreciate its fun format.
"...And, of course, the cartoons make it fun to read...." Read more
"...in a accessible and adequate depth, with appropriately entertaining cartoons intermixed between the pages...." Read more
"...I also enjoyed the cartoons and humor." Read more
"...in a very joyful cartoon journey, seizing your attention through simplified "real-life"..." Read more
Customers find the book offers good value for money.
"...And, it explains it more clearly. Given its low price, and incredibly useful content, I'd say this is a "must" for just about everyone...." Read more
"...I love this book!! It is worth the money!!" Read more
"Good price and a worthwhile buy. It was a good price and helped me immensely. I would buy it again. Good price and a worthwhile buy." Read more
"...I read this book and enjoyed it a breat deal." Read more
Customers have mixed opinions about the cartoon content of the book, with some appreciating the full coverage of cartoons and finding them cute, while others find them unhelpful and annoying.
"...This is a great set of books in cartoon form. Easy to understand. Good condition. Arrived quickly." Read more
"...The humor is pretty dated but to the point of being quaint, so I can't really fault it, having indeed been amused if not in the intended way...." Read more
"...about explaining the ideas of stats simply, and it's done with cartoon figures and down to earth examples. Nothing abstract here...." Read more
"...The cartoons, if anything, can be distracting, as they are not particularly funny or often well-related to the material being covered...." Read more
Customers have mixed opinions about the depth of the book, with some finding it adequate while others note it covers mostly trivial or irrelevant topics.
"...Topics are covered in a accessible and adequate depth, with appropriately entertaining cartoons intermixed between the pages...." Read more
"...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..." Read more
"...It reaches a depth that some introductory statistics courses fail to reach, and all it's treatments are very intuitive...." Read more
"...The discussion is therefore abbreviated and compressed; points are made once only, without examples, and often after skipping important steps...." Read more
Top reviews from the United States
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- Reviewed in the United States on May 27, 2025Format: PaperbackVerified PurchaseGood general purpose book for classroom library. This is a great set of books in cartoon form. Easy to understand. Good condition. Arrived quickly.
- Reviewed in the United States on March 26, 2009Format: PaperbackVerified PurchaseI'm in love with this book and I feel like it was written with me in mind, so if your math background and goals are anything like mine, I can't recommend it enough.
So, here's my deal: I'm a med student and am about to start a bio statistics course. I wanted to brush up on stat ahead of time over spring break, but I knew I'd never bring myself to read a serious stat book on the beach (especially having ADD). I've never taken a stat course, but my math education got as far as calculus many years ago, and I teach SAT math so I'm not too rusty on algebra. I'm also a general-purpose science nerd and feel pretty comfortable with the fundamentals of probability.
Most of the chapters started out reviewing things I already knew - for example, one of the first chapters goes over the definitions of mean and median and how to calculate them - none of which was news to me. (Ironically, even though the author probably ought to include such basic concepts for the sake of completeness, anyone who doesn't already understand how to calculate an average is probably going to find this book too advanced). But the chapter then went on to explain how to calculate standard deviations and other more advanced concepts I'd long since forgotten at a pretty ideal level.
So, at my present math-nerd rank, some of the book was skimmable review, and most of it was exactly what I was hoping to learn presented in a way that was neither dumbed-down nor confusing.
I was afraid that the gimicky nature of a cartoon math text might go along with sloppy pedagogy, but it's exactly the opposite. I feel like a lot of thought was put into presenting the material in the most logical way possible. It's also ideal for visual learners like myself, since every concept is shown as a picture or graph, sometimes in multiple ways. And, of course, the cartoons make it fun to read. Don't expect the jokes to be hilarious, but they're cute enough to keep my attention, and that's HUGE.
Now, here's who I think shouldn't buy this book: I think if you're a serious math geek you're going to find this book too slow. (On the other hand, a serious math geek probably wouldn't buy a cartoon math book anyway...) While it might be useful to a geek who's just forgotten an equation or two, you'd have to wade through a lot of cutesy stuff to find a specific bit of info.
I also think you shouldn't buy this book if you're a total math-a-phobe. The book assumes a fair amount of math background, and uses scary greek letters. If you're up for a challenge, I think almost anyone can get some use from the book, but if your math skills are really lacking, you'll have to be brave when reading it. It's not going to hold your hand. This book plus a patient math-geek friend to fill in the gaps might get you through, though. I hate to discourage anyone from buying this book, since I think it does such a fantastic job - but you should have fair warning that it does go into moderately advanced concepts.
In short, this is a book for nerds who think math is kinda cool, are already comfortable with the basic concepts of probability, and are looking for a serious but fun crash-course in statistics. It's also ideal for visual learners and those who find it difficult to force themselves to read prose-heavy texts.
I personally feel like I'm going to rock my bio stat class thanks to this book, and I seriously enjoyed reading it.
- Reviewed in the United States on July 15, 2020Format: PaperbackVerified PurchaseI already have a good knowledge of statistics but got this to as a general reference, since it is more succinct than many other stats books.
For actually learning, I think this book is good if you struggle with basic concepts like standard deviations, z-scores and dice roll probabilities. If you are taking your first stats class in college, this book by itself would maybe get you to a B (depending on the teacher). The material ends at linear regression, and doesn't say much more about it that isn't obvious, so I don't think this will teach you any techniques that would actually be useful in the real world. It will however give you part of a foundation for learning those.
I think the book falls into the common trap of similar books that try to make complicated concepts accessible. It spends way too much time overexplaining the easy parts of the subject, which is probably already not hard for most people. The middling material is not given as much attention, so is not that much easier. However I feel that stats textbooks often have a particularly bad habit of overcomplicating simple things, so relative to those this one is quite good. It will only put you to sleep a little bit. When you get to the hardest parts of the subject, the whole accessibility begins to fall apart in the face of irreducible complexity, and the veneer of simplification actually makes it harder to understand. This one ends with regression, and I found that chapter confusing despite already knowing regression. Although then again, most other stats books are even worse. However, usually when I'm looking for a simplified description of a subject, I'm interested in the simplification of the hard parts. I figure that if I need a simplified version for the easy parts, the harder parts will be hopeless anyway, so the problem is that I lack some important foundation rather than how the material is explained. Maybe the assumption is that most people never finish the book so its better if the early chapters are done best, but the early chapters of this would cover maybe your first midterm. And usually that is not the one you need help with.
Ordinarily I love concrete examples and vignettes for explaining stats because I think it's not really a complicated subject, it's just easy to get lost when you don't have the right intuition. However the cartoons and stories in this book don't really add much, they have a lot of filler that just tells a story to tell a story, and doesn't actually help explain the concept at hand. Maybe if the material was new to me they would help ward off boredom. The humor is pretty dated but to the point of being quaint, so I can't really fault it, having indeed been amused if not in the intended way. It might have been better to include humor *about* statistics, rather than barely relevant jokes that sort of tangentially reference statistics.
Statistics is the kind of subject where just learning 10% of it gives you some useful tools for understanding a few common real-world situations (including those studied by other subjects) and learning about 30% will equip you to deal with most situations you face when not deliberately looking for tough problems, ie. doing statistics research. This book gives you about 5% which is to say it teaches you enough to solve toy problems, but falls short of teaching you to apply it to real ones. For example it teaches the t-test for comparing normally distributed variables, which is indeed a very useful test. But often variables are not actually normal. There's usually some tricks you can do to fix that (eg. taking the log), but the book doesn't go into it. Or it doesn't cover the chi-square test, which is closely related and arguably comes up more often in life (and almost as often in stats exams).
As I said, if you read this book very carefully it will give you okay understanding. If you want a good understanding the best thing is probably to find someone to show it to you with realistic examples. As far as learning from books, I would consider this one a warm up before you start on the real thing.
Top reviews from other countries
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Amazon CustomerReviewed in Italy on September 20, 2017
5.0 out of 5 stars Libro geniale!
Format: PaperbackVerified PurchaseLibro molto divertente, informativo (ovviamente NON è un libro di testo di statistica!) e utile per ripassare e fissare le idee. Assolutamente consigliato!
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Sonia MCReviewed in Mexico on December 12, 2019
5.0 out of 5 stars Bueno para explicar a no técnicos
Format: PaperbackVerified PurchaseBuen libro para entender conceptos complicados. Me gusta que incluye conceptos complejos y aunque es un acercamiento sencillo y breve me ha ayudado a explicar a clientes no técnicos temas complejos como diseño de experimentos.
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AlinaReviewed in Spain on October 10, 2020
5.0 out of 5 stars Very good book
Format: PaperbackVerified PurchaseMuy buen libro!aunque ha legado un poco dañado(
- Reid OrrReviewed in the United Kingdom on May 16, 2025
5.0 out of 5 stars format helps to read and absorb
Format: PaperbackVerified PurchaseWonderful. Much easier to read and absorb this graphic content in the hard copy paperback. Whereas in the kindle version which I also have, you really have to scroll around laboriously and lose the visual impact of the cartoons.
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EnzoReviewed in Brazil on January 6, 2025
5.0 out of 5 stars Fácil entendimento
Format: PaperbackVerified PurchaseMuito bom para entender de estatística