For anyone interested in network traffic analysis, particularly IDS/IPS, this is a unique and valuable book. It does assume a basic knowledge of networking (maybe CCNA level), and mathematical statistics to about 2nd year university.
The book focuses on practical approaches to computing useful estimators, including performance optimisation for real-time analysis. It also has examples of data visualisation methods.
Despite its compact size, the scope of the book is quite broad, ranging from traffic modeling, to user profiling, to viral epidemiology. It describes various attack types. It also covers some useful tools for data acquisition, integrity checking, etc.
I did have to go back to my old textbooks to fill in the gaps in my grasp of probability density functions, but the concepts are discussed clearly.
The only slight criticism, is that commercial IDS/IPS systems have come so far since the book was written, and the scale of the problem has also expanded exponentially. I would like to see a revised edition some time. However, the theory and most of the practicalities discussed still hold, and the book should still be useful for some time to come.