The Manga Guide to Regression Analysis

Manga is the Japanese sounding but not used so much in Japan term for a form of cartooning art that has its roots from before World War II but that emerged in its common form during the post war Occupation period. Early used in political cartooning, Manga style drawing is now used for a wide range of expression, and has a place in illustrating a wide range of products, read by Japanese citizens of all sorts and ages. Outside of Japan, Manga is the starting point for the wildly popular Anime style of expression, which of course brings us to...

Pokeman go

But, we are not here to talk about Pokeman go. We are here to talk about Regression Analysis.

No Starch Press has been producing Manga Guides for some years now. They cover many area of math, science, and technology. (I've provided a list below.)

The most recent Manga Guide is The Manga Guide to Regression Analysis by Shin Takahashi and Iroha Inoue.

This book presents the story if Miu, a young woman who is having some trouble understanding regression analysis. But she has a love interest to inspire her, and a brilliant coworker to guide her, and with these motivations and tools embarks on a learning journey to grasp such concepts as how to calculate the regression equation and check it's accuracy, how to use correlation coefficients, test hypotheses, conduct analyses of variance (and analysis of variance is mathematically identical to a regression analysis), predict odds ratios, and do a few parametric statistics to boot.

This is the book that a graduate student who needs to know regression, but is not in a highly mathematical field and skipped college Statistics, will read, learn from, and later claim belongs to his younger brother. Or, that a science-oriented non scientist who is tired of glossing over the statistical parts of the science she reads can use to get up to speed. Or, that a business person or political junkie who wants to use basic regression tools to spot trends or predict primary outcomes might find helpful.

I think that Manga is a medium that many people relate to and find comfortable, and for such individuals, all of the Manga guides, to various math and science concepts, are great. If you have a high school student in your life who is facing a stats course, this is a good gift. Even though the book focuses on Regression, you should know that regression analysis incorporates, or in some way relates to, the vast majority of statistical techniques. When I've taught or tutored graduate level stats, and I learned this from the famous Mark Pagel, I've always focused on regression because it is very intuitive, yet powerful, and touches on everything. In other words, if you are going to learn one advanced statistical technique, make it (multiple variable) regression.

Interestingly, The Manga Guide to Regression Analysis is a great introduction, but it is not confined to basic regression. The material in this book takes you through a number of different ways to do regression, and will bring you to the point where you should be able to understand and swap in any of the numerious alternative modeling approaches that are out there and available in various statistical packages.

An appendix provides a guide to using Excel to do regression analysis.

Other Manga Guides

  • The Manga Guide to Physiology
  • The Manga Guide to Physics
  • The Manga Guide to Electricity
  • The Manga Guide to Linear Algebra
  • The Manga Guide to Statistics
  • The Manga Guide to Biochemistry
  • The Manga Guide to Calculus
  • The Manga Guide to Databases
  • The Manga Guide to Relativity
  • The Manga Guide to the Universe
  • The Manga Guide to Molecular Biology
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    "...and do a few parametric statistics to boot."

    Do you mean nonparametric tests? - all the ones you mention are, I will assume, the parametric versions.

    Sounds like an interesting book, but it is disappointing that Excel is the tool of choice. I know that it is (almost) universally available, but its statistical tools are abysmal, and many still have serious problems. (Not to mention the poor quality of the graphs it produces.)

    This reminds me a bit of "The Cartoon Guide to Statistics" by Larry Gonick and another person, from the early 1980s.

    Manga (漫画) is hardly a word "Japanese sounding but not used so much in Japan," though we in the West tend to associate a particular subset of manga with the term. It's existed as a word and a form of publication in Japan for over two hundred years.

    By weirdnoise (not verified) on 19 Jul 2016 #permalink