Errata

Head First Data Analysis

Errata for Head First Data Analysis

Submit your own errata for this product.

The errata list is a list of errors and their corrections that were found after the product was released.

The following errata were submitted by our customers and have not yet been approved or disproved by the author or editor. They solely represent the opinion of the customer.

Color Key: Serious technical mistake Minor technical mistake Language or formatting error Typo Question Note Update

Version Location Description Submitted by Date submitted
PDF Page Page 146 and 148
page 146 (on the right side at the end) and page 148

Page 146: On the right side at the end of the page the link between "Competitor Product Releases" and "PodPhone Product Releases" should be "-" sign instead of "+" .
Page 148: I think there's no link between "Economy" and "Competitor Sales".

thanks.

 Mauricio Rizzo  May 31, 2023 
Printed Page 73
2nd paragraph

Shouldn't

"... which showed that persuading people that Starbuzz coffee is a more effective way to increase sales ..."

read better as

"... which showed that persuading people that Starbuzz coffee is good value is a more effective way to increase sales ..."

 Dan  Mar 10, 2010 
Printed Page 79
box

we have time to make 400 ducks or 300 fish...

should read

we have time to make 400 ducks and 300 fish ...

 Anonymous  Apr 03, 2010 
Printed Page 79
Right top box with letter, 2nd paragraph

The 1st sentence of paragraph 2 in the letter box does not match the feasible region outlined on page 85ff. Instead of "We have time to make 400 ducks or 300 fish." it should read "We have time to make 400 ducks and 300 fish."

 ramiro  Feb 12, 2012 
Printed Page 106-107
throughout

Year after year after year, the data shows FISH HIGHER THAN DUCKS in January. The constraints offered by the author are simply wrong. There is NO "surge in duck sales to beat fish sales"

The proper constraint for January ought to be: "DUCK sales probably won't be higher than 50 and FISH sales probably won't be higher than 150."

I am surprised the author blew this one so badly.

 Anonymous  Feb 13, 2013 
Printed Page 146
top and bottom of page

I'm confused: you have "Competitor Product Releases" and "PodPhone Product Releases" negatively linked at the top of p.146 (and on p.148 as well), yet at the bottom of p.146 you have them positively linked. Am I missing something?

 Dan  Mar 10, 2010 
PDF Page 148
Sharpen your pencil Solution

About page 148 again, shouldn't there's a link between "Consumer Spending" and "Competitor Sales" instead of a link between "Economy" and "Competitor Sales"?
Although bouth are corrected, I think it would be more directly.

 Mauricio Rizzo  May 31, 2023 
Printed Page 174
(right box)

page 174, where it is stated (right box) that 9% of 90 people is 10, should be 8.1.

 Anonymous  Sep 11, 2009 
Printed Page 174
Scenario 2 Box

Mathematical Error: 9% of 90 is not 10 (as your book states). 9% of 90 is 8.1. Thank you.

 Karen Miller  Apr 18, 2011 
Printed Page 174
Scenario 2

9% of 90 is not 10, it is 8.1. It should read "which is about 8 people who test positive but do not have it ."

 Anonymous  Jun 19, 2012 
Printed Page 194
2nd paragraph first email

reads funny: I'm a considered dreamer by ... such a gesture or the part of government ...

shouldn't it read: I'm considered a dreamer by ... such a gesture on the part of government ...

Pete Aven  Aug 23, 2009 
Printed Page 217
Baye's rule

Why is the P in the formula suddenly lowercase in the denominator? (same for page 219)

 Pete Aven  Aug 23, 2009 
Printed Page 276
description of Rconsole graphic on lower page

The text says "If you run the summary statistics on your negotiation subsets, the results are..."
The graphic then shows a command on R...

">summary(employees$raise_amount[employees$negotiated ==TRUE])

Question: How do you get to this subset? When I enter this in R, there is no "raise_amount" found. Do I have to create a new table somehow?

Anonymous  Apr 18, 2011 
Printed Page 276
Bottom of page, screen capture of R code

Bottom of page, screen capture of R code

Working through the R samples in this section, I?m working with this data set:
source("http://www.headfirstlabs.com/books/hfda/hfda.R") page 265.
When viewing the data the following headers are available:
X received negotiated gender year
The screen shot of the R code indicates the user should enter employees$rase_amount and this field doesn?t exist in the data. Using the received field doesn?t duplicate the results.


> summary(employees$received[employees$negotiated == TRUE])
Min. 1st Qu. Median Mean 3rd Qu. Max.
-1.800 6.300 7.600 8.096 9.000 25.900
> summary(employees$received[employees$negotiated == FALSE])
Min. 1st Qu. Median Mean 3rd Qu. Max.
1.700 4.300 5.000 4.994 5.700 8.100
> sd(employees$received[employees$negotiated == FALSE])
[1] 0.9650627
> sd(employees$received[employees$negotiated == TRUE])
[1] 3.077446

 Scott Magboo  May 02, 2011 
PDF Page 342
Raise Reckoner qualification

The statement "Most but not all raises will be within a range of 25% more or less than the prediction" either seems like:
a) It's missing a decimal point "2.5%" (although that's different than the R.M.S. found a page earlier (2.298)
b) There should be an explanation of the math done to turn 2.298 into 2.5%.

 Daniel Fisher  Feb 27, 2010 
PDF Page 379
first paragraph

"tying" should be "typing"

 Gabriel Pannwitz  Aug 22, 2011 
PDF Page 381
answer to question 3

In the first sentence of the answer to question 3: "host" should be "most".

 Gabriel Pannwitz  Aug 22, 2011 
PDF Page 382
the first paragraph after the email ( and the bold heading )

The phrase "relational databases give you the ability to make" should be in parenthesis. Without them, I had to read the sentence a bunch of times in order to descypher what the phrase "is just enormous" is referring to. What is enormous ? Relational databases ? My ability to make ?

 Gabriel Pannwitz  Aug 22, 2011 
PDF Page 383
In one of the headlines across the top of the "Dataville Dispatch"

"new" should be "knew"

 Gabriel Pannwitz  Aug 22, 2011 
PDF Page 386
the "Load this!" link

The link is clickable, but it does not point to actual file, rather to the "Head First Data Analysis" home page. This makes it cumbersome to retrieve the file.

 Gabriel Pannwitz  Aug 22, 2011 
Printed Page 403
Formula at top

I agree the formula is too long, and that the R / regular expression is much nicer. I think you can still make the point that the formula is too complicated using this version instead:

=MID(C3,1,FIND("(",C3)-1) & MID(C3,FIND(")",C3)+1,500)

This formula only uses 4 functions (MID x2 and FIND x2) whereas yours uses 6 (CONCATENATE, LEFT, RIGHT, LEN, and FIND x2).

Just in case someone doesn't have access to R, or really needs to learn Excel, I think it would be better if you could show them the simpler version.

 Anonymous  Aug 20, 2013 
Printed Page 423
1st paragraph and annotation for y=a+bx

I think only polynomial should be bolded? (instead of bolded: polynomial rather)

annotation reads: You used data this equation to..., shouldn't it be something like: You use data with this equation to ...

 Pete Aven  Aug 23, 2009