The Art of Statistics: How to Learn from Data

We are awash in statistics, we find it everywhere – in the news, in commercials, in business, in the sciences – just everywhere. This book aims to provide a grounding in statistics, but without delving too much into the formulas related to statistics. Its approach instead is through presenting a problem – most are interesting as touch most readers. After outlining the problem, the text explores statistical concepts through diagrams and data-visualization techniques to make its point. It is not just the simple concepts such as measures of central tendencies (mean and median) or data dispersion (such as standard deviation and quartiles), but also the more complex concepts (such as poisson distribution and p-values) which are also discussed with a folksy which permeate the entire book.

While the book’s goal is a noble one, and it eschews formulas throughout its narrative, some readers may have to re-read portions of the text to fully grasp the concept discussed. Readers who are more practically-minded may find that the book approaches its topics from a “statistics first” perspective (i.e. moving from statistics to the problem, rather than starting from the problem to reaching for statistics as a tool to solve the problem). The narrative’s warmth is captivating, and its focus on concepts rather than formulas makes it a recommended primer on statistics.