The Manga Guide to Statistics is a great way to introduce the subject to a young person who is math-smart but is not innately passionate about the subject and even those who are math-wary. A lot of bright kids don't enjoy math as much as they enjoy reading because they are not able to tie back math skills to real life experience.
Whereas, they realize that reading opens up whole new worlds of ideas and experiences, they are not quite able to see how the ability to solve challenging geometry riders enriches their lives. This disconnect is often hard to solve for, specially if the kid is an advance level reader. After a while, they tune out of math because the sense of empowerment they achieve by way of reading is far greater than being able to work out math problems based on a set of rules - once they have achieved proficiency at problem solving they are bored.
The Manga guide uses simple examples from a kid's everyday life to introduce concepts in statistics. In doing so, it is able make math come alive and connect with real life. For a lot of kids, this would be a fascinating connection that they had not been able to make before. From being merely math smart, they may go to actually loving the subject. If you are looking either for a riveting comic book story-line or serious tome on statistics you will be disappointed. The book aims to shows the reader how real life problems can be framed and solved using elementary statistics - and it does a wonderful job of it.
Whereas, they realize that reading opens up whole new worlds of ideas and experiences, they are not quite able to see how the ability to solve challenging geometry riders enriches their lives. This disconnect is often hard to solve for, specially if the kid is an advance level reader. After a while, they tune out of math because the sense of empowerment they achieve by way of reading is far greater than being able to work out math problems based on a set of rules - once they have achieved proficiency at problem solving they are bored.
The Manga guide uses simple examples from a kid's everyday life to introduce concepts in statistics. In doing so, it is able make math come alive and connect with real life. For a lot of kids, this would be a fascinating connection that they had not been able to make before. From being merely math smart, they may go to actually loving the subject. If you are looking either for a riveting comic book story-line or serious tome on statistics you will be disappointed. The book aims to shows the reader how real life problems can be framed and solved using elementary statistics - and it does a wonderful job of it.
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