Testimonials | book-1

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"This book brings new light on standard topics and presents statistics as the ‘language of science’ ... It takes a modern approach, moving away from the notion of population."

"The book owes its success ... to its simple informal language and engaging style."

"Methods that are usually presented as afterthoughts ... such as the bootstrap plug-in principle ... are employed early on to facilitate explanation of concepts."

"Overall, the book is very well written and well organized ..."

Irene Kaimi, in Journal of the Royal Statistical Society: Series A (Statistics in Society) Volume 178, Issue 1, Article first published online: 12 DEC 2014, p. 302.

The book covers the content of a typical undergraduate math stat text, but with much more thought to application than a typical such text. It appears to be close to Rice’s text (Mathematical Statistics and Data Analysis) in spirit and level, but perhaps comes closer to that spirit than Rice’s. It would be worth considering for a course using Rice. I also recommend it as reading and reference for anyone teaching applied statistics.

Martha K. Smith, Professor Emerita of Mathematics, UT Austin

Don't let the authors' exuberant and iconoclastic style fool you into thinking that this book is not a serious text. It definitely is. The style has a purpose---to romp around the field's sacred cows and show the reader as quickly as possible the real working principles behind how statistical methods are developed and some of the methods’ most important applications. In that sense, the subject of the book truly is theoretical statistics, but both the motivation and the presentation are so thoroughly grounded in practice that many readers will see it as a practical guide. But the authors don’t intend for it to be a statistical cheat sheet: each of their many engaging and illuminating examples points forward to more that could be studied, and invites readers to pursue those studies. This isn’t the last statistics textbook students will ever need, but it should be the first.

Randy Tobias, Managing Scientist, SAS Institute

Understanding Advanced Statistical Methods is an excellent source for the curious student. The book introduces a novel approach to learning statistics by providing a comprehensive coverage of concepts in a captivating framework. Students are not only encouraged to understand the intuition and structure behind the concepts, but also motivated to think seriously about the pertinent questions before they ask. Therefore, the book strives to build a solid background in fundamental concepts and equip students with the necessary skills so that they can expand their toolbox in their future endeavors. The book will no doubt be the standard reference in advanced statistics courses and bring about profound changes in how statistics should be taught.

Ozzy Akay, Assistant Professor of Personal Financial Planning, Texas Tech University

I work with scientists who are pioneers in their fields and their ignorance of statistical concepts never ceases to amaze me. I believe most of this can be traced to the way we teach statistics to non-statisticians: as a bag of tools rather than a systematic way to think about data collection and analysis. This book is unique in the way it approaches this topic. It does not subscribe to the cookbook template of teaching statistics but focuses instead on understanding the distinction between the observed data and the mechanisms that generated it. This focus allows a better distinction between models, parameters and estimates and should help pave a way to instill statistical thinking to undergraduate students.

Mithat Gönen, Biostatistician, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center

Your book is really amazing. My wife likes to read it too. She is an assistant Professor of Human Development and Family Studies, Texas Tech. She is teaching the course “Quantitative Methods,” and said that she would consider adopting your book as one of the textbooks for her students in future.

Jianjun Luo, Ph.D. student, Wind Science and Engineering, Texas Tech University

Love the approach, and the departure from being a cookbook... It's the "why"! Not the "what"! ... exactly!

Stephen B. Cox, Ph. D., Director of Operations, Research and Testing Laboratory, LLC