by David Freedman
ISBN: 0393929728
Buy on Amazon
Found in 2 comments on Hacker News
pseut · 2012-12-09 · Original thread
- "Statistics" by Freedman, Pisani, and Purves: http://www.amazon.com/Statistics-4th-David-Freedman/dp/03939... (but an old edition would be fine)

- Any of Wainer's books (the author of the original pdf)

(Added later): books that explain the history of statistical thought are surprisingly good, because they explain the context and the problems the statistics were originally meant to solve. I really enjoyed "the lady tasting tea" and I think I learned from it.

kenjackson · 2011-12-13 · Original thread
You're talking college stats and calc. And even then Chicago and Stanford. It's like saying that Harvard's Math 55 should be the model for intro math courses in college.

I think the original poster was thinking high school and a target much more like Freedman's text (http://www.amazon.com/Statistics-4th-David-Freedman/dp/03939...).

And what Freedman's book does probably better than any other text in the field is teach how to think about statistics. It doesn't have a lot of formalisms, but if can come to an understanding of what he teaches in that book you'll have a rich understanding of stats.

With that said, if Calc was taught in the context of functions and probability, as in the Gemignani text then I think we'd be better off than how Calc today is focused around engineering.