American Society for Quality

Review
Author(s): R. R. Stone
Review by: R. R. Stone
Source: Technometrics, Vol. 22, No. 4 (Nov., 1980), p. 632
Published by: Taylor & Francis, Ltd. on behalf of American Statistical Association and
American Society for Quality
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 632 BOOK REVIEWS
A Basic Course in Statistics, by G. M. Clarke and D.
Cooke, John Wiley & Sons, 1978, xvi + 368 pages, price
not given (paper bound).
Elementary Statistics in a World of Applications,
by Ramakant Khazanie, Goodyear Publishing Company,
Inc., 1979, vii + 488 pages, price not given.
Both texts would serve for a first course in statistics. The con-
tents are generally the same covering the subjects of descriptive
statistics, measures of central tendency, measures of dispersion,
probability, probability distributions, sampling distributions, esti-
mation, hypothesis testing, linear regression, correlation, analysis
of variance, goodness of fit and contingency tables. In addition,
Elementary Statistics has a chapter on nonparametric methods.
Clarke & Cooke (C & C) have written a text more oriented
toward mathematics majors and those interested in rigorous math-
ematical notation. Khazanie (K) has, on the other hand, written a
text which is readily readable by a variety of students from different
fields, giving pertinent points without the formal mathematical
rigor. Both texts have highlighted definitions and main points in a
fashion beneficial to the student.
In reading the texts, I found myself distracted to some extent by
the British flavor in C & C in that their examples use football,
pounds, etc., and by the dated example in K using 55 cents as the
price of a gallon of gas.
I would recommend either of these texts as suitable for a first
course in statistics. The choice would be mainly affected by the type
of student to be taught.
R. R. Stone
International Business Machines Corporation
The Information in Contingency Tables, by D. V.
Gokhale and Solomon Kullback, Marcel Dekker, Inc.,
1978, x + 365 pages, $29.75.
A stable feature of the analysis of multiway contingency tables is
the rich, often confusing, variety of estimators and tests. The vig-
orous development over the past decade has concentrated on esti-
mation procedures: maximum likelihood, minimum modified chi
square (weighted least squares), and minimum discrimination in-
formation (MDI) estimators. There have been one or two centers of
activity concerned with the development of each of these three
approaches, each with its own style. Perhaps the structure which I
impose on the development of the area is an over-simplification,
but insofar as the structure has any reality, The Information in
Contingency Tables presents the work of one of the major centers of
activity.
This book approaches the topic from the inferential point of view
of Professor Kullback's 1959 book in which he develops an infor-
mation theoretic approach to statistics. Since the approach may be
unfamiliar to the reader, the authors provide a brief introduction to
the theory.
The book is divided roughly into two parts, one on the internal
constraints problem (ICP), the other on the external constraints
problem (ECP). Internal constraints problems include log-linear
and logit models for multiway contingency tables; the MDI esti-
mates are maximum likelihood estimates. External constraints
problems include models for proportion in a linear scale and
models for marginal homogeneity in contingency tables; here the
MDI estimates are not the maximum likelihood estimates.
One of the strengths of the book is that numerous examples are
worked out in detail. The authors devote substantial effort to
helping the reader understand applications. Since many of the
models require iterative techniques, the book is organized around
computer algorithms prepared by the authors. Forty-five dollars
bring a computer tape of PL/I programs and another 250-page
manual.
TECHNOMETRICS ?, VOL. 22, NO. 4, NOVEMBER 1980
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The reader can approach the book in one of two ways: (1) either
as the application of a unified theory of statistical inference to
contingency tables, or (2) as the application of a theory that
approximates maximum likelihood or minimum chi square estima-
tion. How you choose to interpret the book will depend on your
background.
Although the book sets out to be self-contained, it quickly gets
into technical detail sufficient to discourage the nonprofessional.
A review by Lindley (1959) of Kullback's 1959 book is still
relevant to The Information in Contingency Tables:
The student (and he will have to be an advanced student,
for the basic ideas of probability and statistics are
assumed known) will welcome the unity of ideas, but will
undoubtedly be worried when reading outside of the text
because most writers do not adopt Kullback's approach.
The authors' ideas, while still appealing in 1980, still have competi-
tors. There is substantial overlap between the principle of mini-
mum discrimination information and maximum likelihood. Both
procedures are the same for the internal constraints problem.
While Kullback and Gokhale were able to incorporate the external
constraints problem into their system sooner than workers in the
area of maximum likelihood estimation, maximum likelihood can
incorporate the external constraints problem also (Wedderburn,
1974).
Readers new to this area may find the investment required to
learn the authors' system more than they want to try, especially
since the methods can be handled within conventional theory. The
book provides little justification as to why one should abandon
classical Fisherian principles for the MDI approach.
The book could have benefited from careful editing to improve
organization and style. It is produced in photo offset directly from
typescript. The typesetter's art could have enhanced the book's
quality immeasurably.
Members of the information theoretic school of inference will
undoubtedly be pleased to have this work summarized in one
place. Readers familiar with more classical approaches may want
to consult the work of other authors also.
Charles L. Odoroff
University of Rochester
REFERENCES
KULLBACK, S. (1959). Information Theory and Statistics. New
York: John Wiley and Sons, Inc.
LINDLEY, D. V. (1959). Review of Information Theory and Sta-
tistics. J. Amer. Statist. Assoc., 54, 825-827.
WEDDERBURN, R. W. M. (1974). Generalized linear models
specified in terms of constraints. J. Roy. Statist. Soc. B, 36,
449-454.
Advances in Fuzzy Set Theory and Applications,
edited by M. M. Gupta, R. K. Ragade, and R. R. Yager,
North-Holland Publishing Company, 1979, xi + 753
pages, $73.25.
Fuzzy set theory was developed out of the need to account for
the imprecision or fuzziness present in description of complex
physical situations. Fuzzy theorists speak of ill-defined sets such as
"X is much larger than 1", or "X is approximately equal to 3".
Let X be an arbitrary set. Then a subset A of X is characterized
by its indicator function IA: X - {0, 1}. It was Zadeh (1965) who
suggested that a proper tool for handling ill-defined sets is to replace
the rigid all-or-none of set membership by a graded membership
function, PA: X - [0, 1]. A fuzzy subset A of X is a set of ordered
pairs A = {x, PA(x)), x E X} where HA is the membership function of
A. There is now a vast amount of literature on fuzzy set theory and