Book Review: Statistics for Engineers and Scientists Third Edition

At first glance, Statistics for Engineers and Scientists Third Edition may seem like an ordinary overpriced textbook crammed full of far more information than any one class could possibly use, but as it turns out, this text can actually serve as a highly useful tool for those who own it. Students in Probability and Statistics this semester might particularly notice that this book has a wide variety of uses which can help ease one’s passage through the course.

First off, the aesthetics of the book are genius. The bold red and blue colors featured prominently on the cover make it easy to identify the book with a glance so students don’t have to waste time looking for it and are free to work on finding more inane ways to put off doing their homework. Additionally, the book is thicker and shorter than the average textbook, which makes it possible to locate the book without the advantage of sight. It is comforting to know that the makers of this text foresaw the needs of its audience and made sure that the book is easy to locate whether students are rummaging through a backpack or fumbling around in the dark. Students can find their copies of the book without having to strain themselves with the arduous task of finding a light source even at three in the morning when they realized that their Prob Stats homework is due in a few hours.

The size of the book provides many other advantages for its users as well. The hardcover edition measures in at 1.5 inches (3.81 cm) thick, which is the perfect size for making loud noises whenever it is subject to any high-velocity impact. Thus, when students encounter frustrating situations, such as unsolvable problems or having to wait nearly a week after a test happens to find out when the make-up exam at least forty of them must take is happening, they can angrily hurl the book across the room with relative ease to make a satisfying impact on any nearby walls or furniture. The unique size of the text makes it so that when students receive shocking news, say, that the aforementioned make-up exam was scheduled to start at six in the morning, their automatic reaction of dropping the book in surprise is helpfully accompanied by a nice, dramatic “THUD” to emphasize the astonishing nature of the situation.
Additionally, the book is just the right size to serve as a pillow, so that when students come to grips with the fact that the six am time slot is not a joke or a typo, they have a comfortable place to rest their heads as they lay down to curl up and weep at the prospect of the early morning doom that lurks in their near future. Truly the publishers of this book deserve to be lauded for their incredible foresight.

Of course, a true review of this text would be incomplete without talking about the actual content printed on its pages. The educational content is laid out in a manner that makes a lot of sense. The text features plenty of explanations of theories and how concepts and equations are derived, as well as the usual assortment of equations and examples. It is well-organized and the important information is clearly highlighted, which is helpful for calming the panicked minds of students who, the night before their six am exam, suddenly realize that they only have a few hours left to study, rather than the typical entire day. It is almost as though the authors of the textbook knew that they would need to make the layout conducive to the desperate last-minute cramming of students who would be pulling all-nighters to make sure that they didn’t sleep through the start of an exam.

All in all, this is an excellent book. Its versatility goes well above and beyond the call of duty. It offers students not only education, but a source of stress relief, dramatic sound effects, portable pillow options, and of course, it comes standard with an eye-shading feature that is activated when the book is held over the student’s eyes to shield them from any unexpected sunlight that seems to magically appear during any exam that starts when it is still early enough to be dark. Granted, it is entirely possible that those who are in charge of scheduling common exams might one day re-vamp their system so that conflicting exams and crazily early morning make-up tests never happen again, thus rendering most of the features of this book obsolete, but until that happens, this book is highly recommended for all Prob Stats students who want to get the most out of the ungodly amount of money they have to spend anyways on a required textbook.