Book Review: OpenIntro Statistics 3

OpenIntroStats3

A few days ago I was discussing on the Coursera forums what course to take next. Since I am interested in the Data Science path from Johns Hopkins, and a few of these courses have heavy roots into statistics, somebody suggested to me to have a look at Openintro Statistics. OpenIntro Statistics edition 3 is a free book from openintro.org. The declared purpose of the site is to: “Create a free and open-source introductory textbook“. I have to say that this goal is fully achieved. In the best recent tradition of on-line text books, this book is full of links to youtube.com videos that summarize chapters or examples of the book. This is a really great resource, making the entire reading and learning experience less hard to tackle. Furthermore, the book is organized so that the reason why do we want to study statistics is explained in the first chapter, which covers the topic of “data”. Another asset is that most of the practices are “double”. There is an explained example and a second one where the student is supposed to resolve a problem following steps similar to what done in the guided example. Chapters 2 to 8 are more easy to read when you know why you want to do it. All in all, one of the best free on-line resources that I have ever accessed!

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