Student: $180 textbook filled with errors

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TAMPA, Fla., April 11 (UPI) -- A University of Southern Florida student who paid about $180 for a statistics textbook said he was dismayed to find the tome is riddled with errors.

Jason Richardson, a junior at the Tampa school, said he discovered "The Joy of Statistics" is filled with errors concerning both the content of the math and the English used to explain it, WFTS-TV, Tampa, reported Wednesday.

Richardson said he "noticed a lot of things that didn't make a lot of sense" shortly after purchasing the textbook.

"The sentence reads 'A random sample of 50 pieces of plastic are being used 6mm these pieces of nylon rope are taken and the breaking strength (KN) is measured," Richardson said.

He said he discovered numerous other language problems in the book, as well as many errors in the math it purports to teach. He said his teacher, one of the authors of the book, blamed the errors on the publisher.

Chad Chandlee, the president of publisher Kendall Hunt, acknowledged the book has several errors.

"It's human error. It's an unfortunate part of publishing, and it sounds like in this case from what I'm being told there were a significant amount of errors," he said.

However, he defended the book as still being a useful resource for learning.

"My question would be, did the book advance their ability to learn the subject matter? I think our answer to it is it did," Chandlee said.