Re: Best Intro Stat Book

[dummy-suckem@xxxxxxxxx (Robert)]

Hi.  I was wondering: what book did you final settle upon?

 > From: "Clark Goble" <clark@xxxxxxxxx>
 > Date: 14 Dec 2001 02:05:27 -0600
 >
 > I have a friend at work who wants to be able to understand better some of
 > the algorythms we are working on.  Most of them involve Markov models,
 > Bayesian statistics (belief networks), and then some relatively simple inner
 > products for computing similarity.
 > 
 > Since I learned most of my stats in physics and the rest by simply figuring
 > it out, I'm not sure what books to suggest for him.  His background in math
 > is fairly basic, but he can certainly figure things out through calculus.
 > It seems to me that most stats is fairly simple and that half the problem is
 > getting a conceptual grasp and then getting the notation down.  So I figure
 > there has to be a good primer that would help him out.  He's quite smart,
 > but not really that mathematically minded.  So probably something with lots
 > of examples and solved problems would be best.  I looked around, but most of
 > the books just deal with the same old stuff, which while relavant, doesn't
 > quite get into Bayesian stuff that much.  Most books I've found seem more
 > oriented on either theory or traditional stuff about bell curves.
 > 
 > Any good suggestions for books?  I'd like to get him a few for Christmas.
 > 
 > Thanks
 > 
 > Clark