
Book review: Head First Statistics vs. The Manga Guide to Statistics - domedefelice
http://blog.asymptotic.co.uk/2009/11/book-review-head-first-statistics-vs-manga-guide/
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melling
There are a few statistics courses on YouTube.

Joe Blitzstein’s Harvard 110 Course is good. I’ve got a list of resources
here:

[https://github.com/melling/MathAndScienceNotes/tree/master/s...](https://github.com/melling/MathAndScienceNotes/tree/master/statistics)

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rossdavidh
"statistics is something of a blind spot for programmers, who tend to think of
themselves as numerically proficient but often dismiss statistics as
unimportant “stamp collecting” for people who can’t do “real maths”" ...I've
literally never heard anything like this from any programmer (or anyone else,
actually). Has anyone else heard a programmer express such an attitude towards
statistics? Mostly I've heard people say that statistics is hard, or counter-
intuitive.

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oliwarner
That's definitely a viewpoint amongst other branches of mathematics.
Statistics isn't too bad, but _applied_ statistics is viewed as a crap shoot
of confounding human factors, widely practised by charlatans trying to prove
their brand of science by abusing numbers.

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screye
Isn't all of machine learning, economics, industrial engineering and
statistically social science a form of applied statistics ?

That's a lot of fields to dismiss by simply handwaving.

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oliwarner
Yes. These are exactly the sorts of soft science a pure mathematician would
snub.

It's not, I think, that they're without utility, it's that the science
involved in discovery is often accidental or observational.

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SomeHacker44
I wish high school would put statistics in the primary math curriculum, even
over (pre) calculus. I feel a solid understanding of statistics and their
occasional counter intuitive nature, and especially how to properly interpret
things and significance measures would be enormously valuable to citizens of
this modern information age.

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jkmcf
Outside the U.S., I'd love to know when people learn calculus and stats. I had
both as a H.S. senior, which seems very late compared to other countries.

I had a stats prof from India who always commented on how he learned calculus
in 6th grade. Our "intro to stats for business majors" class had us deriving
the statistical proofs with calculus... (I'm aware he's probably an outlier)

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mettamage
Don't forget The Manga Guide to Databases! I needed to have a good working to
do some standard CRUD database things with SQL. The Manga Guide to Databases
was the most fun and educational read I have ever had. It covered enough
skills for me to create whatever CRUD feature my employer needed.

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phakding
I have seen head first books being recommend by many. The only one I ever read
half way though was one on design patterns and I regretted it. When I am
learning something new, I want every sentence to be information heavy. So I
could learn much more efficiently. Head first books just drag on and on with
jokes, unnecessary conversations, cartoons and stuff. I literally gave up and
Google searched each design patterns.

All my engineers books were pretty dry and to the point.

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riffraff
There is a balance to strike, I'd say. I recall Norvig's Artificial
Intelligence as a great text which also had some pretty funny jokes (mostly
relegated to footnotes, IIRC)

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Regardsyjc
I'm currently enjoying The Cartoon Introduction to Economics and enjoyed The
Cartoon Introduction to Statistics.

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Zren
I have A! 5!5!%

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Zren
I... don't remember writing this comment. Changed my password.

