<story><title>Programmers Need To Learn Statistics Or I Will Kill Them All</title><url>http://zedshaw.com/essays/programmer_stats.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>Perceval</author><text>I&apos;m trying to teach myself statistics (for social sciences) right now.  I got two books (Agresti &amp;#38; Finlay along with Knoke, Bohrnstedt &amp;#38; Mee) but both seem to be written in jargon instead of English.&lt;p&gt;Does anyone have recommendations for statistics books that are actually written in English?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>kqr2</author><text>Zed actually recommends quite a few books in his post:&lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;    * Statistics; by Freedman, Pisani, Purves, and Adhikari. Norton publishers.
    * Introductory Statistics with R; by Dalgaard. Springer publishers.
    * Statistical Computing: An Introduction to Data Analysis using S-Plus; by Crawley. Wiley publishers.
    * Statistical Process Control; by Grant, Leavenworth. McGraw-Hill publishers.
    * Statistical Methods for the Social Sciences; by Agresti, Finlay. Prentice-Hall publishers.
    * Methods of Social Research; by Baily. Free Press publishers.
    * Modern Applied Statistics with S-PLUS; by Venables, Ripley. Springer publishers.&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;</text></comment>
<story><title>Programmers Need To Learn Statistics Or I Will Kill Them All</title><url>http://zedshaw.com/essays/programmer_stats.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>Perceval</author><text>I&apos;m trying to teach myself statistics (for social sciences) right now.  I got two books (Agresti &amp;#38; Finlay along with Knoke, Bohrnstedt &amp;#38; Mee) but both seem to be written in jargon instead of English.&lt;p&gt;Does anyone have recommendations for statistics books that are actually written in English?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>thomaspaine</author><text>Funny you should ask, I just ordered a copy of a stats textbook I used back in undergrad because I remember thinking that it was pretty clearly written with lots of examples. It&apos;s &quot;Probability and Statistics for Engineers and Scientists&quot; by walpole . If you get a used 7th edition instead of the 8th, it&apos;s $10 instead of like $100. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.amazon.com/Probability-Statistics-Engineers-Scientists-7th/dp/0130415294/ref=cm_cr_dp_orig_subj&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.amazon.com/Probability-Statistics-Engineers-Scien...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;Introductory Econometrics by Woolridge is a pretty readable econometrics text you should also check out, since it&apos;ll be especially applicable for social science: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.amazon.com/Introductory-Econometrics-Approach-Applications-Solutions/dp/0324581629/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&amp;#38;s=books&amp;#38;qid=1263067238&amp;#38;sr=8-3&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.amazon.com/Introductory-Econometrics-Approach-App...&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>