Mathematical Statistics with MATHEMATICA

Author: Colin Rose, Murray D. Smith List Price: $79.95 Our Price: Click to see the latest and low price ISBN: 0387952349 Publisher: Springer Verlag (08 March, 2002) Edition: Hardcover Sales Rank: 122,631 Average Customer Rating: 3.6 out of 5

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Customer Reviews

(i) Book: The book is roughly the level of Hogg & Craig and up. It is academically precise (no waffle) with an emphasis on problem solving rather than proofs. The CD includes an identical MATHEMATICA version of the book (with navigation palettes that open when you load the software). So, if I want to look up how to create a copula or a mixture distribution or find the pdf of an order statistic or generate random numbers from some arbitrary custom pdf no-one has even heard of before, I just go to the electronic index, click on the entry, and I immediately have a structure for my own example, without having to re-type anything. Very neatly done! And with the bundled software, I can solve problems in a few seconds that took me hours and hours last month. It all fits like a glove and it is a pleasure to use. More importantly, perhaps, it is fun to use. My only gripe is that it would have been nice if some of the pictures in the printed text where in color, but this is a tiny minor gripe because they are already in color in the electronic version anyway.

(ii) Software: The book comes packaged with the MathStatica CD. Book owners can register it for free (basic version); you can evaluate everything in the book with it (it is not crippled) and it includes online ?function Help. I have used several MATHEMATICA applications and the standard/quality of mathStatica is just way ahead. Application packages normally cost $$$ or $$$ or more, so the bundling of mathStatica with this book is like getting Xmas early. Getting a password was a breeze and it turned up in my email box within about 30 seconds.

Most impressed with the book and with mathStatica.

1. You don't get online help. That is, you do get entries in the help
browser, but they all point you to the website and tell you to buy the
"Gold" version. Very annoying. Why waste the space, if the help is not
there anyway?

2. When you start mathStatica, you always get two annoying popup
windows that serve absolutely no purpose except to remind you that
there is a "Gold" version. One of them pretends to be a Distribution
palette and a Help launcher, but provides no functionality except show
advertisements when you click on it. The other one just blatantly
shows "Upgrade!".

3. In the registration process they ask for your personal data, such as
address, etc. I have no idea why. There is no information on how this
data will be used, and no privacy policy. That's rather invasive.

4. The software will run with only one copy of Mathematica on one
machine. The license agreement also says that the authors can't
guarantee anything, not even that it will work with any future
versions of Mathematica. The license is non-transferable. Translation:
change your job and buy another book. Change your Mathematica
platforms and buy a new book. It's simply unfair.

Overall this is quite annoying. After spending a considerable amount
of money on the book that says "Includes mathStatica" on the cover,
one gets constantly reminded that he should upgrade to the "Gold"
version to get the full functionality. Nothing wrong with there being
a better version, but I consider all the nagging reminders
impolite. It's not as if I got the stuff for free, the book isn't
cheap after all.

Also, I would suggest that the authors rethink the licensing policy. I
mean, we're talking scientific book sales here, not
pump-out-your-customer, make-him-pay-for-upgrades, make-him-buy
the-full-version, give-him-no-rights licensing schemes! And it's not
like everyone is going to just copy the software and spread it
around. This software only runs with an expensive Mathematica system,
so the user base is already quite limited. It also really complements
the book. I think the authors went way overboard with the whole
copy-protection/restricted-licensing thing and this is rather sad.

Overall, while this seems to be a good book, I am so disgusted by the
attitude (treat your reader as a thief, pump the money out of him),
that I grade it fairly low.

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