John E. Freund's Mathematical Statistics with Applications

With a very limited background in theoretical probability & statistics (as was the case for me), this book is no doubt a challenge and requires serious patience at times. However, the effort really paid off in the end, leaving me with a both intuitive and in-depth understanding of important statistical concepts. The only real frustration was that there are only answers to half of the exercises, and even these are not worked out. Having a solution manual with worked solutions to all problems would have EASILY made this a 5-star book.

This book differentiates itself from other mathematical statistics books by the accuracy of its content (almost no errors). Multivariable Calculus is definitely a prerequisite to this book though, and many of the exercises and examples deal with proofs. I would have given the book 5 stars but it lost points for two reasons:1.) The latter chapters (after chapter 3, except the applications chapters) include almost no applied examples.2.) The authors have a bad habit of introducing new problems in the exercises.I can't think of any proofs that were neglected, and all of the proofs were elegant and complete, but very few applied examples were given. Despite these shortcomings I liked the book and feel it is a good calculus based introductory book to mathematical statistics. If you are looking for a deeper understanding of statistics and the mathematical theory behind statistics then this is a great book for you!

I found that this book was excellent in covering all the matierial that is required in order to pass the 101 course in stats for the institute and faculty joint exams. Everything is easily digestible with the right amount of examples. Especially for a person with no stats background.