Study Aid Review: Mastering Statistics Volume 1

 

I own most of Jason's DVD sets (aside from the very basic math sets and his Java programming sets). Some I have purchased through Amazon, and some through his website directly. I am back in school to get an electrical engineering degree. Next fall I have to take data analysis, which is basically applied statistics, with a teacher who does not have a great reputation, so I purchased all the volumes in this set, plus his original probability and statistics tutor  The Probability and Statistics Tutor - 10 Hour Course - 3 DVD Set - Learn By Examples! , to get the basics down before I take the class.

This volume covers the basics/core concepts of statistics. There is a little bit of overlap with his older DVD set, because while that one focused on probability some of the principles from statistics are used in probability and vice versa. So things like histograms, mean and standard deviation and variance will all be refresher concepts if you have the old set. But he does get into a lot of new material, some are definitions like Sample and Population which he did not really get into before, the various types of plots and charts, and things like Quartiles and the various theorems that are applicable only to statistics. So it is definitely not a double dip if you have the older set.

Like all his other DVD sets, Jason covers everything in a step-by-step manner. The new layout for his DVDs has been to introduce the concept in one section and then do example problems in the subsequent section(s) on that topic to keep the individual sections of the DVD shorter. In his older sets it was not uncommon to have hour-plus long sections, which could get to be a bit much if you attempted to watch the entire thing at once. In this set the longest overall section was right under a half hour. He rarely, if ever skips any steps in the problems he works through (I don't think he ever skipped any in this set), and even when he does he warns you ahead of time.

Learning style is different for everyone, but I find the way he explains concepts be it in math, physics, chemistry or engineering are very easy to follow, and much better than some of the free material that you can find out there. It is basically a video lecture though, not unlike sitting in a class lecture, but generally more condensed and focused on problems more than it is on the overall theory. So if it is a fit for your learning style, and you are taking any kind of statistics class, I would highly recommend this.