Discovering statistics using R
"Hot on the heels of the award-winning and best selling Discovering Statistics Using SPSS Third Edition, Andy Field has teamed up with Jeremy Miles (co-author of Discovering Statistics Using SAS) to write Discovering Statistics Using R. Keeping the uniquely humorous and self-depreciating style that has made students across the world fall in love with Andy Field's books, Discovering Statistics Using R takes students on a journey of statistical discovery using the freeware R, a free, flexible and dynamically changing software tool for data analysis that is becoming increasingly popular across the social and behavioral sciences throughout the world. The journey begins by explaining basic statistical and research concepts before a guided tour of the R software environment. Next the importance of exploring and graphing data will be discovered, before moving onto statistical tests that are the foundations of the rest of the book (for e.g. correlation and regression). Readers will then stride confidently into intermediate level analyses such as ANOVA, before ending their journey with advanced techniques such as MANOVA and multilevel models. Although there is enough theory to help the reader gain the necessary conceptual understanding of what they're doing, the emphasis is on applying what's learned to playful and real-world examples that should make the experience more fun than expected."--Publisher's website.
Stats for nerds
4recommend
10mentions
8people
2014–2024years
60% recommend40% neutral
Mentions per year
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- For learning about the basics of statistics, my go-to resource is "Discovering Statistics using [R/SPSS]" (Andy Field). "Improving Your Statistical Inferences" (Daniel Lakens) needs some basics, but covers a lot of intesting topics, including sequencial testing and equivalence tests (sometimes you want to know if a new thing is equivalent to the old)
- I was rather fond of Discovering Statistics using R. It doesn't drive this point about linear models home quite so lucidly, and the author's sense of humor can be off-putting to some. But it generally does a pretty decent job of explaining the logic and motivations behind different statistical models and tests, and remains one of the more readable math textbooks I've ever trudged through.
- Statistics books I liked:
Motulsky's Intuitive Biostatistics - this one goes over all the usual methods used in science from distributions to t-test to ANOVA to regressions etc., the basics, but doesn't introduce the maths (you use R for that) but the assumptions and pitfalls of all of those methods.
Statistics Done Wrong: The Woefully Complete Guide - this is all the stuff that's going wrong in applied statistics, a bit short but enlightening
Discovering Statistics Using R - a whopper of a book (~1000 pages?), it goes through everything while also being funny (the constant humor may not be for everyone). Graphs, correlations, regressions, all the MLMs and GLMs, linear models etc. pp., their assumptions, how to run them in R, how to interpret R's sometimes annoying output, etc. pp. Like Motulsky's, but wayyyyy more in-depth on the language's specifics.
Naked Statistics - an intro to stats for laypeople with a focus on politics/economics, good for interpreting and assessing daily news
- Some of my favorites this year:
Fiction:
- Jude The Obscure, Thomas Hardy. The way Hardy 'smuggles' Jude's viewpoint into the narrative is so ridiculously well crafted, a pleasure to read.
- Legend Of The Galactic Heroes - a big anime from the 80s which was based on Japanese soft SF novels, which are now finally being translated. Worth a read if you're into space operas and large scale politics, I'm happy that the age of ebooks allows for such 'niche' interests to get translated.
Non-fiction:
- Secondhand Time: The Last Of The Soviets, Svetlana Alexievitch. It's her 'usual' style, a selection of interviews with a 'chorus' of shorter interviews, this time about the fall of the Soviet Union. Lots of interesting stuff from people whose world was replaced with another world overnight.
- The Pursuit of Glory: Europe 1648-1815, Tim Blanning. This is actually an entry in the long row of Penguin History of Europe, but I haven't read the others. It examines certain aspects of change in Europe (starting with how transport networks moved from mud roads to proper streets and culminating in how the nation state was invented)
- Vanished Kingdoms: The History of Half-Forgotten Europe, Norman Davies. As the title says, a collection of essays on small kingdoms and countries which have only existed for a short time, some for which no current country claims 'ancestry'. It's always important to remind yourself what a random patchwork current European borders are.
- Eckermann's Conversations with Goethe. This is a collection of notes on young Eckermann's conversations with the aging Goethe. Goethe is famous for always challenging himself, always trying to create, make and be involved until his last day, it's absolutely inspirational. Before this book I didn't understand why he's such an icon for Germans (and I read a few biographies), but I get it now, he lived the 'man is his own marble' saying.
Computer stuff:
- Introduction to Machine Learning with Python, Mueller and Guido. This is essentially a more detailed version of the scikit-learn documentation with more elaborate exercises (even though some of it overlaps), highly readable. The scikit-learn documentation itself is among the best python package documentation out there and is something you can read 'cover to cover'.
- Write Great Code - I've only started to read this one, it's very much about the basics of what a computer does when you're running high level code, so you can adjust your coding style. So far it's very useful.
Stats:
- Discovering Statistics Using R, Field/Miles/Field. A very opinionated, highly amusing (the constant humor may annoy some), huge waltz through statistics and how to use the methods and interpret their output in R.
- Discovering Statistics Using R by Andy Field. Fantastic book and very readable and at times hillarious.
- Discovering Statistics Using R by Andy Field is a fantastic and entertaining book.
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