Some theory of sampling

What Hacker News says

1. kqrFeb 2026
   The New Economics! Then Out of the Crisis. Then if you're really hardcore, Some Theory of Sampling.
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2. PaulHouleJan 2025
   I love Out of the crisis by Deming and Some theory of sampling.
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3. kqrAug 2024
   I don't think the mathematics is what gets most people into trouble. You can get by with relatively primitive maths, and the advanced stuff is really just a small-order-of-magnitude cost optimisation.

   What gets people are incorrect procedures. To get a sense of all the ways in which an experiment can go wrong, I'd recommend reading more traditional texts on experimental design, survey research, etc.

   - Donald Wheeler's Understanding Variation should be mandatory reading for almost everyone working professionally.

   - Deming's Some Theory of Sampling is really good and covers more ground than the title lets on.

   - Deming's Sample Design in Business Research I remember being formative for me also, although it was a while since I read it.

   - Efron and Tibshirani's Introduction to the Bootstrap gives an intuitive sense of some experimental errors from a different perspective.

   I know there's one book covering survey design I really liked but I forget which one it was. Sorry!

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4. kqrAug 2024
   I second both The Signal and the Noise as well as How to Measure Anything. I also mentioned upthread Willful Ignorance.

   I think perhaps the best bang for your buck could be Wheeler's Understanding Variation -- but that is based mainly on vague memory and skimming the table of contents. I plan on writing a proper review of that book in the coming year to make certain it is what I remember it to be.

   I think the earlier works by Taleb also touch on this (Fooled by Randomness seems to have it in the title).

   But then I strongly recommend branching out to places where these fundamentals are used, to cement them:

   - Anything popular by Deming (e.g. The New Economics)

   - Anything less popular by Deming (e.g. Some Theory of Sampling)

   - Moneyball

   - Theory of Probability (de Finetti)

   - Causality (Pearl)

   - Applied Survival Analysis

   - Analysis of Extremal Events

   - Regression Modeling with Actuarial and Financial Applications

   The more theoretical and applied books are less casual reads, obviously. They also happen to be the directions in which I have gone -- you may have more luck picking your own direction for where to apply and practice your intuition.

   Edit: Oh and while I don't have a specific book recommendation because none of the ones I read I have good opinions on, something on combinatorics helps with getting a grasp on the general smell of entropy and simpler problems like Monty Hall.

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