Books for the Intelligent Layman
Applying Statistics to the Important, Unexpected or Fascinating

And They Teach How To Improve One’s Thinking!

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Very Interesting Books Showing How Important Statistics Is in Many Areas

Easy:

• Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game by Michael Lewis. How statistics is being used by baseball teams to get to the World Series on the cheap. This book would be of great interest to the young and the young in spirit.
• Freakonomics : A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything by Steven D. Levitt, Stephen J. Dubner. Really freakish but important applications of statistics. A lot of fun. I was many months in the New York Times Best Sellers list. This book would be of great interest to the young and the young in spirit.
• Super Crunchers: Why Thinking-by-Numbers Is the New Way to Be Smart by Ian Ayres. This very easy to read book discusses how statistics gives a competitive advantage to businesses that uses it, especially, regression and randomized comparative studies. The book has about fifty interesting applications including how to predict the quality of wine, how to predict which potential recruits will turn out to be good baseball players in the major leagues, and which movies will do well based on the script. This book would be of great interest to the young would like to see what a professional statistician could do. Also great for those who like to see how business works.
• The Numerati by Stephen Baker. How assorted number crunchers use our shopping, blogging, phoning and Web surfing habits to track and influence our behavior. These people know one more than we know ourselves. This book would be of great interest to the young would like to see what a professional statistician could do.
• In an Uncertain World: Tough Choices from Wall Street to Washington. Robert Rubin was secretary of the treasury during the Clinton administration. His account of how he uses probability to solve problems and make money. More of interest to more mature students who would like to know how a top Wall Street trader, and former secretary of the treasury, used probability to assess risk an make a ton of money.
• Predicting Presidential Elections and Other Things by Ray Fair. This is book reviews techniques that are used in predicting elections that might be more reliable than polls. Also great applications to extramarital affairs, wine quality, inflation and marathon times among others.

Harder:

• Against The Gods: The Remarkable Story of Risk by Peter L. Bernstein. Turn in a report on how probability and statistics can be used to manage financial risks of all types.

Book Showing That Will Improve the Quality of Your Thinking

• Calculated Risks: How To Know When Numbers Deceive You by Gerd Gigerenzer. (Required book report for Stat 571)
• The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable. by Nassim Nicholas Taleb. (Required book report for Stat 571). The role of the unexpected. (NYT best seller in August 22, 2007.)
• The Tiger That Isn't: Seeing Through a World of Numbers by Michael Blastland and Andrew Dilnot
• The Drunkard's Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives by Leonard Mlodinow. A wonderful read that made it the best-sellers list of the New York Times.
• The Myth of the Rational Voter: Why Democracies Choose Bad Policies By: Bryan Caplan. This technical but accessible book shows using studies how voter vote against their interests because they lack an elementary knowledge of statistics and economics.
• Innumeracy: Mathematical Illiteracy and Its Consequences By: John Allen Paulos
• Beyond Numeracy By: John Allen Paulos
• How to Lie With Statistics By: Darrell Huff (Author), Irving Geis (Illustrator)
• More Damned Lies and Statistics: How Numbers Confuse Public Issues Joel Best
• Damned Lies and Statistics: Untangling Numbers from the Media, Politicians, and Activists By: Joel Best
• Why Do Buses Come in Threes?: The Hidden Maths of Everyday Life By: Robert Eastaway

Books about the History of Statistics

• The Lady Tasting Tea: How Statistics Revolutionized Science in the Twentieth Century
  by David Salsburg
• THE FIRST MEASURED CENTURY: An Illustrated Guide to Trends in America, 1900–2000 by Theodore Caplow, Louis Hicks and Ben J. Wattenberg is a book about social change in the United States during the twentieth century. It relies on statistical trends to tell that awesome story.  This is the book accompanying a three-hour PBS series for which the footing is available and the book are available free at the web site

More Advanced Books

• "Scientific Reasoning: The Bayesian Approach, Second Edition" by Colin Howson and Peter Urbach. Open Court Publishing Company. This book is somewhat hard to read but is accessible to the intelligent layman. Shows why Bayesian statistics is the way to go. And why randomization is not as important as sometimes made out to be. Discuss what the authors think is wrong with classical statistics and how the Bayesian approach overcomes these problems.
• "The Taming of Chance" by Ian Hacking. Cambridge University Press. Selected by The Modern Library as one of the 100 most important non-fiction books published in English in the twentieth century. A series of historical examples showing how probability and statistical ideas arose.
• "The Emergence of Probability: A Philosophical Study of Early Ideas About Probability, Introduction and Statistical Inference" by Ian Hacking. Cambridge University Press. An earlier book byone of the great contemporary philosopher of science.