The authors covered many topics in applied statistics, but they didn't mention anything about time series analysis. I am disappointed after reading this book. The biggest problem with this book is that it's overly simplistic - typically only one technique is illustrated for each topic - for example, in cluster analysis, only hierarchical clustering was mentioned and there was nothing about partitional algorithm. The authors only used very small datasets, which ignored the biggest power of SAS, the ability to handle large datasets. The authors also printed all raw datasets in the book, which took quite a bit of space.



The authors should read Venables and Ripley's Modern Applied Statistics with SPlus first. Venables/Ripley made a great example on how to write an applied statistics book using a specific software.