Customer Reviews

Principles of Statistics

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This brief book gives an understandable introduction to the main ideas of statistics, with problems at the end of each chapter, and answers in the back. There is a bit of calculus. The book is nicely written, with interesting examples.

This modest little book is both a masterpiece and a gem! I can't praise it enough! It is different from any other statistics book I have ever read in that it puts you in the place of famous historical figures in statistics and helps you rediscover their findings. His use of original source material is very well done. The book is self-contained and the author proves almost everything of importance(some of the proofs are more intuitive than rigorous at times, but that's the point). Bulmer has a knack of making the most difficult concepts (hyperspace, degrees of freedom) seem natural. He covers a very broad terrain from distributions, tests of significance, inference, Bayesian methods, etc. Written on many levels, this is useful for a novice or intermediate student but I suspect professional statisticians will find much to keep them thinking about. While reading through this book you will often say "aha, so that's why they do that". For the price it is the best value possible; you won't regret picking up a copy of this book and if you enjoy the inner workings of statistical theory you will refer to it again and again.

Very good reference guide and detailed but not out of
reach of the simply educated.

This book is too technical and has too much math. A better book for the elementary learner is "Practical Statistics: Simply Explained," by Russell Langley. Bulmer's book may be useful to me later on after I understand basic statistics. But don't waste your money if you know little about statistics and you don't like complex mathematical explanations.