Pyzdek Institute Black Belt’s Book Clarifies Confusing Concepts in Statistics

I’ve taught the Six Sigma process quality methods to many students over the years. Invariably, it’s the statistics that confuses people the most. There has been a real need for a book that clears up this confusion. Now, a graduate of the Pyzdek Institute Black Belt program has done something about that.

Andrew A. Jawlik has written a book titled Statistics from A to Z: Confusing Concepts Clarified, published by Wiley.

Despite having an MS in Math, Andy – like many other intelligent, technical people – found the statistics in most college statistics courses to be difficult and confusing. And existing statistics books weren’t much help. In preparation for the Black Belt certification exam, he started writing his own explanations, augmented by diagrams and pictures. These helped him ace the exam (along with our training, of course!)

He showed some of this work to me and asked if I thought he should pursue writing a book. I encouraged him to do so. Two and a half years later, he completed a 418-page book.

The book is alphabetically arranged, like a mini-encyclopedia, comprised of 74 succinct articles on more than 60 statistical concepts. Each article starts with a one-page list of about 5 “Keys to Understanding”, so that you can see everything you need to know on a single page. Subsequent pages in the article provide expanded explanations of these Keys. There is liberal use of graphics like concept flow diagrams, compare-and-contrast tables, and even cartoons to provide visual reinforcement of the concepts and how they interrelate.

You can see excepts from the book on the website at the link below. There is also a blog on the website in which Andy publishes a Statistics Tip of the Week. And he has just begun uploading videos to his YouTube channel about individual statistical concepts in the book.

Useful Links

• Book Website
• Blog
• YouTube channel