Ask HN: Would you read a statistics textbook?

Yes! I have a degree in telecommunication engineering,but statistics is one of my favourite topics to study. I found things like bayesian inference or MCMC not really easy to master properly

Yes, if those statistics served accounting, and the homework was using something like Python in a Jupyter notebook.

Practical advice:

- put a lot of 'teaching' into the book. Don't write so the learner memorizes; instead, motivate each discussion so that the learner understands, and gains what Wirth calls _coverage_.

- ensure there are no errors; this will turn off learners.

- keep a light tone, be yourself not a stuffed shirt. A good model for such writing is Nassim Taleb's non-technical books.

- never seem to be in a hurry. Many good books were ruined because midway the author lost interest and just hurried up.

- don't be too verbose, and neither too concise. Every sentence should do required work; learn how to write (if needed) and practice daily.

- ensure the book uses good, comfortable fonts, and good typography. Must learn this. Many good books ruined due to lack of fluency effect.

If you conscientiously do these things, there will always be readers for your book.

Good luck!

There are a number of good books to explain the main concepts of statistics without getting bogged down in the technical details. As a grad student at a public university in the USA, I worked as a teaching assistant for the undergraduate course Introduction to Statistics. The course used SPSS software to enable the students to perform statistical analysis on data sets. Although we offered a good textbook (listed below), many of the students struggled with the main concepts, so my colleagues and I added a optional supplemental reading list to the syllabus. The following books are the ones we recommended to the students. I have read all these books, and they are pretty good at explaining statistics to anyone interested in learning the material at a conceptual level; anyone can read and understand these books, regardless of their educational background.

Ian Ayres (2007) Super Crunchers: Why Thinking by Numbers is the New Way to Be Smart.

Joseph Healey (2020) Statistics: A Tool for Social Research [This is the textbook used in the class, which I highly recommend].

John Allen Paulos (1988) Innumeracy: Mathematical Illiteracy and Its Consequences.

Nate Silver (2012) The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail, but Some Don't.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb (2005) Fooled by Randomness, second edition.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb (2010) The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable, second edition.

Would I read it? No

But, It would be helpful for beginners. I work with students and I know a lot (like a lot) of students (not math or stats major, other disciplines) are scared of statistics. They are always looking for resources to learn.