The main strength of this book is that it presents a lot of information in an accessible, engaging and irreverent way. The style is informal with interesting excursions into the history of statistics and psychology. There is reference to research papers which illustrate the methods explained, and are also very entertaining. The authors manage to pull off the Herculean task of teaching statistics through the medium of R... All in all, an invaluable resource.
"This work should be in the library of every institution where statistics is taught. It contains much more content than what is required for a beginning or advanced undergraduate course, but instructors for such courses would do well to consider this book; it is priced comparably to books which contain only basic material, and students who are fascinated by the subject may find the additional material a real bonus. The book would also be very good for self-study. Overall, an excellent resource."
In statistics, R is the way of the future. The big boys and girls have known this for some time: There are now millions of R users in academia and industry. R is free (as in no cost) and free (as in speech). Andy, Jeremy, and Zoe's book now makes R accessible to the little boys and girls like me and my students. Soon all classes in statistics will be taught in R.
Very old edition, using R commander (instead of RStudio) screen shots from an ancient Windows version. Feels like this book is no longer maintained or updated.
Easy explanations Large number of examples Well organized
Cant wait for the next version! The book has a very particular way to help students understand statistic with R!
Excellent and comprehensive statistical text which will be of great interest to students who would like to broaden their skillset using R.
This book will most certainly be adopted as the main course book. It covers the topics needed for my course rather comprehensive, with a closer look on the regression assumptions (how to test them and what to do when they are violated) as well as some extensions to ordinary OLS and logistic regression. It could be a little lengthy sometimes, and it is not always very well structured. I think that the book would benefit from an update (the 5th edition of the SPSS-version of this book looks much better, and I’m looking forward to a similar update of this R-version).
This textbook is easy-to-understand, and it is written in a humorous way. It has all the information needed for an easy comprehension of statistical intricacies. The book also comes with vast database that can be used by students to test their knowledge of the material, and/or how to operate R.
As I'm sure you know, R does more sophisticated statistical techniques for free that mainstream packages do not and so is potentially useful to the doctoral students I teach and supervise. An intermediate step is to use the R links in Field's SPSS book but in the end it is necessary to get to grips with R and this book is a relatively painless way of doing this (especially if you and/or your students are familiar with Fields SPSS book).
Discovering Statistics using R is an excellent book to engage students in learning statistics using top of the line software. The content is presented in a clear and coherent way, and the exercises help reinforce and consolidate knowledge in quite a funny way. It is great material for teaching and learning, but also a handy reference book for researchers.
As an open source software and with a vast supporting community, R is increasingly adopted by researchers. Discovering Statistics Using R allows a soft transition from other statistical softwares to this open source alternative.
Clear and easy to use as an alternative to using SPSS for my psychology students
This book covers the material we need, with plenty of exercises, accessible explanations. Most importantly, it describes and teaches the R statistics platform integrated with the rest of the text.
This textbook is quite thorough, but the overall style of the writing would not land very well to my California audience unfortunately.
This textbook is a marvelous tool to get to know not only the basics in statistics, but also some intermediate and complex analyses. Its structure allows students to grasp concepts, processes and actual uses of the techniques. I can forget about the usual fear experimented by students when starting on a statistics course. An excellent way to start using a powerful tool such as R.
Excellent, comprehensive book and Andy Field is an entertaining author.
I teach statistics to students in behavioral and social sciences using R. Since most of my students are familiar with SPSS rather than R, I use the textbook with SPSS application as primary and this book as alternative. So, students will have the chance to use and learn both software.I think such configuration gives flexibility to both instructors and students. Both Andy's books are easy to read and follow.
Although it is more for social scientists, the book introduces both R and statistics. It is what I needed.
Very good explanations for fundamental concepts and decent coverage of R.
But the book has too much trivial and annoying trivial personal stories that makes me want to change it at the first opportunity in the future.