StatBooks

Why Statistics

American Statistical Association's Statistical Significance  https://www.amstat.org/policy-and-advocacy/statistical-significance-series   "highlights the contributions statisticians make to society, from health care and economy to national security and the environment."

The International Statistical Literacy Project (ISLP)   https://iase-web.org/islp/   Goal is to "contribute to promoting statistical literacy across the world"

Why nurses need to understand statistics  https://online.okcu.edu/nursing/blog/why-nurses-need-to-understand-statistics   

  Experience and instinct aren’t enough to help you make the right decisions in patient care. Understanding medical research and how it applies to current practice means nurses must be able to interpret statistics.

“Some new methods are statistically significant and sound, while others may need more investigation. For nurses to be autonomous in their practice, they have to know how to interpret findings.”  Nursing consultant Dr. Pamela Stokes, MHCA, DNP, RN.

My own opinion: Using statistics, you may sometimes get things wrong, but if you don't use statistics, you will almost always get things wrong.

Statistics books, guides

What statistics should I use  https://stats.oarc.ucla.edu/other/mult-pkg/whatstat/    UCLA's guide

Arsham, Hossein. Statistical Thinking for Managerial Decisions  https://home.ubalt.edu/ntsbarsh/Business-stat/opre504.htm  2015

CADDIS Volume 4: Data Analysis  https://www.epa.gov/caddis/caddis-volume-4-data-analysis  basic concepts, of basic stat and some advanced stat too. Last updated 2024.

Dabbling in the Data. A Hands-on Guide to Participatory Data Analysis   https://www.publicprofit.net/dabbling-in-the-data-a-hands-on-guide-to-participatory-data-analysis/   from Public Profit. "This guide provides a gentle introduction to practical approaches to explore and analyze data"  No date given.

Engineering Statistics   https://www.itl.nist.gov/div898/handbook/index.htm   although much is for engineers, some is also useful for social research. For example a chapter on exploratory analysis  has a section about graphing the data. Another section on quantitative techniques describes many of the usual statistical tests used in social science. 2012

Gustman, Burt. Stat Primer   https://www.sjsu.edu/faculty/gerstman/StatPrimer/     an on line public domain stat manual. 2016.

Hopkins, Will G. A New View of Statistics   https://www.sportsci.org/resource/stats/index.html   all the usual topics, but pretty comprehensive (from 2016). 

Illowsky, Barbara and Susan Dean.  Collaborative Statistics  https://open.umn.edu/opentextbooks/textbooks/11   Illowsky and Dean are faculty members at De Anza College in Cupertino, California. Around 2013

Illowsky, Barbara and Susan Dean. Introductory Statistics. 2013.   https://openstax.org/books/introductory-statistics/pages/1-introduction    "Introductory Statistics is intended for the one-semester introduction to statistics course for students who are not mathematics or engineering majors. It focuses on the interpretation of statistical results, especially in real world settings" These two books may be the same, just published in different sites.

Kozak, Kathryn, Statistics Using Technology 3rd Edition.  https://www.coconino.edu/open-source-textbooks#statistics-using-technology-3rd-edition-by-kathryn-kozak  2020.

Lane, David. HyperStat https://davidmlane.com/hyperstat/index.html  HyperStat Online is an introductory-level hypertext statistics book.  Also comprehensive links to other on line stat books and links to some stat jokes. Looks like last revised in 2013. 

Lane, David and others. Online Statistics Education: An Interactive Multimedia Course of Study  https://onlinestatbook.com   A public domain on line stat multi media course (although to me it looks like an on line text book.) Includes the stat book in various forms, web, interactive on itunes, mobile, pdf. No date given.

Richard Lowry. Concepts and Applications of Inferential Statistics   http://vassarstats.net/textbook/   Basics, t-tests, anova. Last updated in 2023. Lowry is Professor of Psychology Emeritus. Vassar College

McDonald, John H. Handbook of biological statistics  https://www.biostathandbook.com   for biology but much is applicable to any field.  2014. McDonald is professor of biology at University of Delaware.

StatCan.  Statistics: power from data  https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/edu/power-pouvoir/toc-tdm/5214718-eng.htm   This is "a training tool for students, teachers and the general population that will help them in getting the most from statistics."  A general on line stat book with chapters about data collection, processing, problems, presenting, analyzing.  2021.

Stark, Philip B. SticiGui: Statistics Tools for Internet and Classroom Instruction with a Graphical User Interface  https://www.stat.berkeley.edu/~stark/SticiGui/index.htm   includes a text book on basics and advanced basics. 2021

Stockburger, David. Introductory Statistics  https://dwstockburger.com/Introbook/sbk.htm    and Multivariate Statistics  https://dwstockburger.com/Multibook/mbk.htm   2016. Dr. Stockburger is from Missouri State University

UCLA. Probability and statistics EBook   http://wiki.stat.ucla.edu/socr/index.php/EBook   General book. No author given, 2014.

Bayesian Inference

Rens van de Schoot. A gentle introduction to Bayesian Analysis   https://www.rensvandeschoot.com/a-gentle-introduction-to-bayesian-analysis-applications-to-developmental-research/   blog, 2014

Stata has this: What is Bayesian analysis.  https://www.stata.com/features/overview/bayesian-intro/ 

The International Society for Bayesian Analysis (ISBA)   http://bayesian.org/   has a brief description of bayesian inference.

Bayesian Statistics   http://www.scholarpedia.org/article/Bayesian_statistics   from Scholarpedia. 2009.

Clyde, Merlise and others, An Introduction to Bayesian Thinking.   https://statswithr.github.io/book/index.html   Has this chapter: The Basics of Bayesian Statistics  https://statswithr.github.io/book/the-basics-of-bayesian-statistics.html  last updated in 2022.

Guidance for the Use of Bayesian Statistics in Medical Device Clinical Trials  https://www.fda.gov/regulatory-information/search-fda-guidance-documents/guidance-use-bayesian-statistics-medical-device-clinical-trials   2010. This guidebook from the FDA explains bayesian methods "Bayesian statistics is an approach for learning from evidence as it accumulates. In clinical trials, traditional (frequentist) statistical methods may use information from previous studies only at the design stage. Then, at the data analysis stage, the information from these studies is considered as a complement to, but not part of, the formal analysis. In contrast, the Bayesian approach uses Bayes’ Theorem to formally combine prior information with current information on a quantity of interest. The Bayesian idea is to consider the prior information and the trial results as part of a continual data stream, in which inferences are being updated each time new data become available."

Bayesian perspectives for epidemiological research: I. Foundations and basic methods  https://academic.oup.com/ije/article/35/3/765/735529   2006. by Sander Greenland. I have to read this article again to understand what it says, but it's in the International Journal of Epidemiology.

Bayesian Statistics in Oncology  https://acsjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/cncr.24628  by Adamina, Tomlinson and Guller. 2009. Also some explanation.

Bayesian statistics made (as) simple (as possible)   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bobeo5kFz1g   lecture. Look at it starting about 7 or 8 minutes in. This is from Allen Downey  

http://allendowney.blogspot.com/2012/03/bayesian-statistics-made-simple.html   Dr. Downey is a Professor Emeritus of Computer Science at the Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering.  https://www.olin.edu/bios/allen-downey   

Bayesian Statistics   http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLFHD4aOUZFp0Xhzd5j1nWnExD54xJfnJX   from Jarad Niemi, from Iowa State University, Department of Statistics   

http://stat.iastate.edu/people/jarad-niemi     These are for his Intro to Bayesian Statistics class.

Bayesian inference for categorical data analysis   http://www.stat.ufl.edu/~aa/cda/cda.html   Alan Agresti and David Hitchcock, 2005  See the bottom of the page for links to the paper.   

Jim Berger, Professor of Statistics   http://www.stat.duke.edu/~berger/   has a paper The interplay between Bayesian and frequentist analysis. Bayarri, M.J. and Berger, J. (2004) `Statistical Science',  which says statisticians need both Bayesian and frequentist approaches.

Propensity Score Analysis

Antonio Olmos, Priyalatha Govindasamy. Propensity Scores: A Practical Introduction Using R.  Journal of MultiDisciplinary Evaluation. Vol 11 No 25 (2015)    http://journals.sfu.ca/jmde/index.php/jmde_1/article/view/431  

Inacio, Maria and others. Statistics in Brief: An Introduction to the Use of Propensity Scores. Clin Orthop Relat Res. 2015 Aug; 473(8): 2722–2726. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4488189/ 

Columbia has this intro.  https://www.publichealth.columbia.edu/research/population-health-methods/propensity-score-analysis   

Blogs

MD Science Consulting, Patrick Murphy and Heather Duncan, have a set of blog posts about Data Analysis   https://www.mdscienceconsulting.com/blog-1/tags/data-analysis  including posts like "Power Matters, and We Don’t Talk about It Enough",  "A (Mostly) Math-Free Primer on P-values and Confidence Intervals" and "What is Confounding, and Why Does It Matter?"

Sites listing other statistics sites

Betty Jung's Statistics page   http://www.bettycjung.net/Statsites.htm     has links to many stat sites, on a wide variety of topics.

Probability and Statistics Resources   http://home.ubalt.edu/ntsbarsh/Business-stat/R.htm   Professor Hossein Arsham

StatSci   http://www.statsci.org/index.html   intended to be a stats portal

Last revised and validated 6/15/2024