Statistics Books

The best way to acquire the knowledge How to Lie With Statistics is, probably, to read this little, charming book. The book may be more useful as starting point to better understanding of statistical data, that now, with all those spreadsheets and opinion polls, we meet more than ever. You need no background in statistics to understand how statistics can be manipulated.

Do you think that the standard deviation is a criminal offense in six states? The Cartoon Guide to Statistics will give you the basic ideas of statistics and some historical background, in a light and entertaining manner. In it you will find clear explanations of probability, distributions, error functions, hypothesis testing and more, all accompanied with cartoons that will keep you awake even if statistics is not your cup of tea.

Innumeracy: Mathematical Illiteracy and Its Consequences discusses our ability to understand numerical data. The book contains many examples, from the bible to current newspapers, of misleading mathematical and statistical data. The author, John Allen Paulos, coins the term "Innumeracy" to refer to mathematical illiteracy. If you are innumerate, don't be embarrassed: you are part of the silent majority. This book gives you a chance to start understanding all that mathematical and statistical "newspeak". After reading this book you can continue with its sequel, A Mathematician Reads the Newspaper. Using the same friendly approach, the book explains everyday mathematics and sheds clarity on newspapers' statistics.

Basic ideas of probability and statistics are described in a very readable way in The Jungles of Randomness: A Mathematical Safari. The book contains many examples, from games to real-world problems, of the various faces of randomness in our life. The author, Ivars Peterson, is an experienced popular science writer, with an online weekly column about mathematics.

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