Introducing Statistics: A Graphic Guide

Introducing Graphic Guides

by Eileen Magnello, Borin Van Loon (Illustrator)

From the medicine we take, the treatments we receive, the aptitude and psychometric tests given by employers, the cars we drive, the clothes we wear to even the beer we drink, statistics have given shape to the world we inhabit. For the media, statistics are routinely 'damning', 'horrifying', or, occasionally, 'encouraging'. Yet, for all their ubiquity, most of us really don't know what to make of statistics. Exploring the history, mathematics, philosophy and practical use of statistics, Eileen Magnello - accompanied by Bill Mayblin's intelligent graphic illustration - traces the rise of statistics from the ancient Babylonians, Egyptians and Chinese, to the censuses of Romans and the Greeks, and the modern emergence of the term itself in Europe. She explores the 'vital statistics' of, in particular, William Farr, and the mathematical statistics of Karl Pearson and R.A. Fisher.She even tells how knowledge of statistics can prolong one's life, as it did for evolutionary biologist Stephen Jay Gould, given eight months to live after a cancer diagnoses in 1982 - and he lived until 2002. This title offers an enjoyable, surprise-filled tour through a subject that is both fascinating and crucial to understanding our world.

Genres: Nonfiction, Science, Mathematics, Reference, Graphic Novels, Comics, Stem

366 pages, Kindle Edition

First published October 1, 2005

Reviews

[Ashraf Bashir · Rating 1 out of 5]

Not a book about statistics, but the history of statistics. The title is misleading

[James · Rating 4 out of 5]

Every few years I like to refresh my basic knowledge of academic subjects in which I’m interested but don’t use in my day-to-day work. Statistics is one of these subjects and when I saw Eileen Magnello’s _Introducing Statistics, A Graphic Guide_ on Amazon, offered at no cost as part of their Prime Reading program, I picked up a copy for my Kindle.

I was pleasantly surprised at the content of the book, although the structure is off-putting (I’m not a fan of comic book illustrations integrated into the text of a book). Ms. Magnello presents a history of the development of the discipline of statistics rather than a mathematical survey.

Despite several years of statistics and econometrics courses, much of the history and background information were new to me. Most statistics courses dive into the topic immediately without much of a setup. Using an expanded version of this book (albeit without the illustrations playing so prominent a role) as a means to delve into the “why” of the discipline prior to the “what,” would be an interesting way to start a first-year “Intro to Statistics” course.

[Dan Organ · Rating 4 out of 5]

A graphic novel about the history of Statistics rather than delving too heavily into the actual mathematics of it but still really informative and broke down the subject to be easily understood.

I enjoyed it.

[Naresh Chinthaneppu · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good read👍

Good, history of statistics rather than basics of statistics!! One can read it to get an idea of how the subject came in to existence

[Daniel Fernandez · Rating 3 out of 5]

It is about history of statistics, not statistics.

[Daniel · Rating 4 out of 5]

As other reviewers have pointed out, this book is not so much an introduction to statistics as an introduction to the history of statistics. Even so, it's an easy and for the most part worthwhile read, especially if you've taken real statistics courses before. But for a raw beginner who actually wants to learn to do statistics, this overview of a book is unlikely to be enough by itself. That's not entirely the author's fault, given the highly constrained format of the Graphic Guides series. Seemingly every page in this book introduces another topic that would take a book of this size to explain adequately, and illustrate with sufficient examples and study problems.

Statistics is part of mathematics after all, and very few people can learn mathematics just by reading about it. Most people need to work problems in addition to reading, and the more problems you work, the better it sinks in. It's hard to work math problems at a keyboard; the traditional methods include pen or pencil and lots of paper, or a big chalkboard or sets of them. And while computers have many mathematical applications (numerical analysis and computation; automated theorem proving; graphical display of data; typesetting of mathematical equations; etc.), these haven't fully replaced traditional methods for learning mathematics and working out problems into a form suitable for a computer.

While this book doesn't really teach statistics, fortunately it's 2025, so all those additional resources are readily available to anyone with an Internet connection. There are English Wikipedia articles for just about every statistical term and method and notable historic person mentioned in the book. Most of those Wikipedia articles go into far more depth than the book does. We are also solidly within the ongoing AI boom. I used Google Gemini a couple of times while reading the book, first to check the spelling "corcumdum" in the book's illustration of the Mohs scale (that seems to be a misspelling of "corundum"):

That appears to be a typographical error. "Corcumdum" is not an accepted alternate spelling for corundum. Corundum is a mineral with a hardness of 9 on the Mohs scale, second only to diamond. Its name comes from the Tamil word kuruntam. The two most well-known gem varieties of corundum are ruby (red) and sapphire (all other colors).

Toward the end of the book I got stumped by an ambiguous reference to "the proportion of the population of voters in the UK". Gemini guessed what the author was trying to say:

A clearer example would have been: "For example, if a political analyst wants to estimate the proportion of likely voters in the UK who will vote for Candidate X, the proportion is the unknown parameter and the estimate is based on a small random sample of voters." This phrase would have removed all four of your alternative interpretations and made the example's purpose immediately clear.

While I'm far from an expert on statistics, I've taken courses and read various popular works on the subject. I hate to imagine what reading this book would be like for the raw beginner. My guess would be "frustrating." But my advice to the beginner would be, you have to start somewhere, and wherever you start it's likely to feel confusing. So just read what you have (for example, this book) and absorb the confusion. Let the confusion flow. Then re-read this book, and more books on the subject, take notes, watch some course lectures on YouTube, get some real textbooks, read the Wikipedia articles, work some problems, and ask your AI friends to explain what confuses you. The first step in learning any field is to master the jargon, so maybe some Anki flash card decks could help as well.

[Alina Rozhkova · Rating 4 out of 5]

Иллюстрации иногда просто ужасные)

[Makarand Ghule · Rating 5 out of 5]

History of Statistics

The book is very good snippet to understand how statistics got developed, what was the motivation behind its development. It also introduce us to the legends of the field

[Rick Sam · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wonderful book as a simple outline of all models, methods and why each was invented.
I am in awe by Karl Pearson, Francis Dalton, Fisher.

Deus Vult
Gottfried

[Trisha · Rating 3 out of 5]

I thought this was a book on statistics as a subject matter, but it's a book on the history of statistics. So first, the premise of the book does seem misleading. Still, I enjoyed delving into the history of statistics.

I'm not a big fan about how the portrayal of development of inferential statistics, or the second phase of modern statistics, seemed rushed in the book. The book does focus heavily on Pearson's work, which is warranted, but I'd also like more highlights on the work after Pearson, like Gosset's or Fisher's.

More discussion on the development and utilization of statistics in modern time, especially the 21st century, would be interesting. However I'm aware this book was published in 2009, so perhaps there wasn't much to write. I do think there was an opportunity to showcase more use of statistical theories and practice after the Industrial Revolution.

I would recommend this book for anyone looking for a light read. The graphics weren't really supplementary to learning, but it did provide a light ambience to learning the history of statistics.

[CM · Rating 2 out of 5]

A 2nd thought:

Compared to other subject-based works in this series (Time, Consciousness) , it may be too light on the subject matter and a bit overblown on the anecdotal...

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[see the original review below]
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Another decent addition to the Introducing series. As usual, it's more about the history of the discipline, from early 19th century to the mid 20th, rather than the actual subject knowledge. Yet, besides the intriguing connection of statistics with Charles Darwin and Florence Nightingale and all the founding fathers(and their lady companions) of the subject, the scope of this little book actually manage to discuss everything of an intro stat course (descriptive,inferential,t-test,correlation,regression,chi-square)...and more(factor analysis, path analysis). Granted, we don't get many equations and examples but it's a great overview of our statistical method and its development for everyone.

[John Michael Strubhart · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is hardly an introduction to statistics. Yes, some basic ideas are explained and then the book becomes a jargon filled history of statistics. As a historical exposition of the development of the field, this book is competently done if you don't mind a whole lot of jargon thrown in. It's mostly about who did what when and why, but it hardly does anything to actually explain the statistical methods involved. Any John Allen Paulos book will have more statistics explained in in than in this book. Also, this idea of illustrating things that statisticians said is cute at first and then it just gets irritating. For me, it breaks the flow of the writing and if you're reading the kindle version on a phone, you have to magnify the bubbles to read them. Seriously, why do a graphic publication half-assed? Just make a graphic history of statistics. This book is misleading and unless you're a fan of non-action graphics in nonfiction books, don't bother picking it up.

[Andrew Noselli · Rating 3 out of 5]

Believe it or not, before I finished reading this book I read the middle section of Jacques Lacan's "The Other Side of Psychoanalysis", and he immediately started talking about transcribing a Fibonacci series to compute the value of the sign "little a" using a statistic method, ex: a = a+1/a+1/a+1 ...etc. I had thought the synchrony was going to be the Marquis de Sade, whose "120 Days in Sodom" I am reading soon, but I should get used to the fact that other synchronies can and do arise sometimes beyond my expectations. This book got pretty complicated and abstract, but I think I managed to keep my cool and get something out of even its most abstruse passages.

[Silverprince · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very fun book to read to have a grasp of how important statistics are. As a fellow economics student, I found it just a tad bit disappointing because the author didn't go much in-depth into understanding how to utilize the complicated statistical methods. I have to admit that probably isn't the book's intention.

The graphics are very entertaining and not at all distracting from the content. Please read this book if you wish to learn an overview of the statistics world and its history. Personally, this book has made me appreciate statistics more because I didn't realize how much statistics have improved humanity's livelihood.

[Fausto Gonzalez M. · Rating 4 out of 5]

I decided to build my reading habits recently. The Beginning of Everything is my second book. I don't have standards in my life, but I think it could be a great company when you are on a self-development journey.

Ezra is a story based on challenges, life turning and resilience. Cassidy that hole in society, the emptiness that we find when digging deeper in our souls.

The overcoming situations in life were represented by the main character. This attached humor, sadness and deeper part of society that we concern because affect us in our well-being no matter what.

[Darius Daruvalla-riccio · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book structures itself by following the history of the Victorian men who developed statistics. This works to give the reader of what problems are actually meant to be solved with different statistical techniques. As long as they read slowly. If not, this book essentially just tells the history.

If like me, the reader wants to understand the maths behind the stats, they need to stop to watch youtube walk-throughs.

Writing it this way, allows the book to remain an introduction but it can confuse readers by being inconsistent with how much it explains the math.

[Alex Olteanu · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is not an introduction to statistics, it's an introduction to the history of statistics. And the historical material presented is rather shallow.

I haven't really managed to understand who this book is written for. Beginners will get lost fairly easy since they are reading the history of a series of concepts they don't understand and might have never heard of, while people who already know stats will get bored because the material is shallow.

[Dmitri S · Rating 1 out of 5]

Bad text with a bunch of tasteless illustrations. It's alright at the very beginning, when it mostly covers the history of statistics through some historical anecdotes; but then it starts covering protocols and statistical formulas and just simply belly-flops with this little bit more complicated stuff. No amount of silly clip-art pictures will help to explain t-distributions in two sentences, it just cannot be done.

[Christian Vandaele · Rating 1 out of 5]

Only read if you are interested in history, not practical statistics.

The graphics bring very little to the comprehension of the concepts, they are just cute page fillers. The author is a historian who is obviously not interested in showing us how to practically interpret or use statistics. Reading this book does not take very long because many pages are partially blank or filled with useless portraits or cartoons. That little amount time was still too much for me: a waste

[Roger · Rating 4 out of 5]

Quick, easy read. I think the title should be something like Brief History of Statistics rather than Introducing Statistics. When I started the book I was expecting it to be a quick statistics tutorial with graphs to illustrate key concepts. It is not that. Still, I enjoyed reading about the historical development of statistics as a methodology. Many will be surprised that most of the key developments are relatively recent, within the past 150 years or so.

[Jorvon Carter · Rating 4 out of 5]

A history of statistics

This book is mostly a brief history of statistics. It gives a high overview of where some statistical methods came from. It doesn’t go into detail about them. Notably, one of the most important topics in statistics, population estimation, if given only about two pages of discussion.

[John Eldreth · Rating 1 out of 5]

A Graphic Waste of Time

I bought this book thinking it would provide worked examples of how the various statistics are used. What I got instead was a breezy historical overview of various statistical methods. I am not sure why anyone would want to read this book if they really knew what it was about.

[Daniel B. Cudnik · Rating 4 out of 5]

While definitely not a textbook on statistics, it is a nice history on the development of this branch of mathematics and gives a very good overview of statistical concepts. It’s a good place to begin one’s study of statistics.

[Jonathan · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was looking for an introduction to statistics but what I got was a history of it. The graphics broke up the text and made it harder to read on my kindle.

If you're looking to actually learn statistics, try something else.

[David Hyder · Rating 4 out of 5]

Primer

This is a nicely done primer that goes a little bit deeper into statistics than most. It serves as a good introduction to the concepts and as a nice refresher of the concepts. It is written from a UK POV. The graphics provide retro feel.

[Jerrie · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really loved that this book focused on the history of statistics and the types of questions scientists were trying to answer at the time. Fun read for anyone interested in gaining a better understanding of how various statistical methods evolved in the early years of statistics

[Philip Butler · Rating 4 out of 5]

A concise introduction to the world of statistics.
This includes some history of the subject matter, and the key personalities involved.
A good place to start if you are new to the subject, or need to refresh the memory.
I have used the Kindle edition, and rye experience was good.

[Anil Shrivastava · Rating 3 out of 5]

More of a history than a text

Would have appreciated more explanati
on and practical application notes than histories. Must of the illustrations are comic historical than explanatory.

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

A history of statistics, but. It necessarily how to do it.


A history of statistics, but. It necessarily how to do it. It was Silk a good read, and provides background on the development of statistics.

[Kevin Wyckoff · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting book. Entirely about the history of the field. Not a single page of practically useful information on statistical analysis. I can't point to anything here that will make me better at using statistics. But still an interesting read