Ask HN: Would you read a statistics textbook?
I had a classic Bayesian statistical education throughout my undergraduate and grad years, and I've come to conclude that the plethora of books offered are pretty bad. For me personally, statistics is intuitive if illustrated properly, like the website Seeing Theory. I'm wondering whether it would make sense to turn the intuitions behind statistics into a book. Would anyone read it? Do people still read stats books, or would it be mostly a waste of effort? If you wanted to teach or help people understand statistics, what resources would you consider?
No idea about statistics, but in most physics courses in my university, they recommend 3 books: 1) The main book, that has a complete explanation and is well ordered. It's for learning. 2) The Landau book, that is super short and hard. It's only to check you didn't miss any important formula or topic. 3) The Feynman book, that is an assorted collection of fairytales for physicists. It's a pleasure to read it but you must already read 1 to understand it. 4) The Schaum book, that is almost a collection of exercises. Some people hate it. Some people love it. I like it as a companion to the other books. I guess you are complaining that 1 is boring and want to write 3. It's a good idea, but it's harder than expected.
Similar to an old idea I had about how every programming language needs three books: 1. Basic introduction. 2. Reference tome, which has absolutely everything. 3. Cookbook with style advice for the more advanced student, which assumes you've read 1 and can look up various details in 2. These days, 2 would be a wiki and 1 would likely be a bunch of pages on that wiki, but it's still good if you have someone sit down and write 3.
Having also studied statistics in university (undergrad), something I kept running into is that you can't really unlock the intuition for many concepts without taking more advanced courses. For example, degrees of freedom shows up as early as AP Statistics, but even a non-rigorous visual explanation of it leans on linear algebra, which most students don't see until much later. I think more resources like seeing-theory would be great since stats books are almost universally dry (Blitzstein being a notable exception), but I'm not sure how easily more advanced concepts lend themselves to visual explanation in a way that's digestible for a non-stats person.
I feel this boils down my learning journey as well. You start unraveling a very good intuition about the underlying concepts MUCH much later, but partly because those intuitions themselves are never conveyed and are supposed to be learned from the proofs, and are an indirect product of learning.
It depends on what parts of statistics is being taught and the application of each of the leanings and how it relates to the real world. More generally, I would buy a statistics if it is linked to today's interesting technological breakthroughs and also if it comes as a distilled version for beginners.
- rootsudo
Yes, I love it and would do so
- howunfortunate
I'm a nerd and do a lot of stats for my job and I would not read a statistics textbook.
I read a lot of informational things, but math / stats / software has always felt like an area where a book is just the wrong format.
If I were you I'd make an interactive website like SQLZoo or a video series like StatQuest.
Those are educational formats that really clicked with me for whatever reason.
- gus_massa
No idea about statistics, but in most physict courses in my university, they recomend 3 books:
1) The main book, that has a complete explanation and is well ordered. It's for learning.
2) Tha Landau book, that is super short and hard. It's only to check you didn't miss any important formula or topic.
3) There Feynman book, that is anassorted colection of fairytales for physicist. It's a pleasure to read it but you must already read 1 to understand it.
4) The Shaum book, that is almost a colection of exercices. Some people hate it. Some people love it. I like it as a companion to theother books.
I guess you are complaining that 1 is boring and want to write 3. It's a good idea, but it's harder than expected.