The Manga Guide to Statistics

Think you can't have fun learning statistics? Think again.

The Manga Guide to Statistics will teach you everything you need to know about this essential discipline, while entertaining you at the same time. With its unique combination of Japanese-style comics called manga and serious educational content, the EduManga format is already a hit in Japan.

In The Manga Guide to Statistics, our heroine Rui is determined to learn about statistics to impress the dreamy Mr. Igarashi and begs her father for a tutor. Soon she's spending her Saturdays with geeky, bespectacled Mr. Yamamoto, who patiently teaches her all about the fundamentals of statistics: topics like data categorization, averages, graphing, and standard deviation.

After all her studying, Rui is confident in her knowledge of statistics, including complex concepts like probability, coefficients of correlation, hypothesis tests, and tests of independence. But is it enough to impress her dream guy? Or maybe there's someone better, right in front of her?

Reluctant statistics students of all ages will enjoy learning along with Rui in this charming, easy-to-read guide, which uses real-world examples like teen magazine quizzes, bowling games, test scores, and ramen noodle prices. Examples, exercises, and answer keys help you follow along and check your work. An appendix showing how to perform statistics calculations in Microsoft Excel makes it easy to put Rui's lessons into practice.

This EduManga book is a translation from a bestselling series in Japan, co-published with Ohmsha, Ltd. of Tokyo, Japan.

 (27 customer reviews)

I loved "The Cartoon Guide to Statistics" because it was humorous very simply told and yet accurately taught. Some of the material is so good that I now use it in my introductory biostatistics course.

The Manga Guide to Statistics does similar things but a little differently. This book is in cartoon strip form and the characters are familiar to many kids who these days wacth the Japanese cartoons on television and read the comic books. This includes my son Daniel who is a high school junior. Dan hates to read but loves math and science and this is the first statistics book that intrigued him enough to read it! I know is reading it and enjoying learning from it by the questions he asks. So like the other cartoon book on statistics this too is a gentle introduction for those with math skills and those with an aversion to mathematics. It shows how statistics is practical by illustrating the techniques on everyday real world data, such as the scores of bowling team...Read more

Since I enjoyed the Manga Guide to Statistics, I guess the author achieved at least one objective of good teaching - keep the learner interested. The use of well thought out graphics and humorous examples are likely to encourage a learner to attend to the content.
Still, maintaining interest and good teaching, while related, are not identical. One can maintain interest in ways that detract from learning as well as in ways that enhance learning.
The tendency in this text to oversimplify (e.g., the discussion of what is and is not "measurable" at the beginning of the book, the underemphasis of the importance of random selection) are definite negatives. They will lead a learner with no background in the use of statistical procedures to mistaken conclusions about the meaning of measurements and the generalizability of findings.
In at least one case, the oversimplification proceeds to the point of presenting information that is wrong (i.e., the examples of alternative...Read more

I don't know where to start. This is the best statistics book. Ever.

I never thought I'd say this, but the authors have made a book on statistics FUN without dumbing it down (this effectively covers at least the entirety of a college level stat intro class).

As a student, this cleared up many problems I'd been having operationalizing fairly advanced formula within Excel. The chapter on inputting statistical formulae in Excel is amazing and worth the cost of the book in itself. The explanations of the formulas use concrete, real world examples. No gambling examples or other unnecesarily abstract or standard scenarios.

As a teacher, I bow down to Mr. Takahashi and the folks at Trend-pro. Their pedagogical expertise is unparalleled. I can only hope that one day I am 1/10th the teacher this man is. He made statistics, a fairly dry subject, not just palatable, but entertaining.

Arigato.