Statistical Consulting: A Guide to Effective Communication 1st Edition

This is a required textbook for one of my classes. The book is well written and the CD includes good examples of good & bad communication.

This book tells you exactly what you already know in a version that makes it even more confusing. Not worth the 200$ at all. My grade in a class would need to depend a lot on this book for me to open it.

This book is ridiculously overpriced! First of all, one book will not make you a communicator especially in the sciences because every situation is as different as the people involved. Second, communication skills, even for scientists, are best learned through many experiences that require continously refining the approach needed to be effective. This book has good content, but the price is absurd for what you get. If it were priced at what it is worth, which is about $40 not $150, it would be a good place to start. There are many good books available at a reasonable price that discuss scientific communication skills and consulting that can be applied to any technical dicipline. The scam of this book is that it makes the reader believe that statistics requires some special approach that is different from other scientific areas, which in my experience is nonsense. Either you possess the ability to break it down in "layman's terms" or you don't.

I agree with the other reviewer (the one not married to the author) that the publisher has dramatically overpriced this book. That, of course, is outside the author's control. What was under the author's control is the tone of the book. While stressing the need to understand and empathize with clients, she continually refers to herself as "Dr." Derr. Worse, her foils in the little scenarios sprinkled throughout the book are often identified by their first names only. So, "Dr. Derr told John such and such ..." Or "Sally posed a question that Dr. Derr answered ...". That would not work well in the medical school where I am employed.