Schaum's Outline of Theory and Problems of Probability and Statistics

Although this is not a textbook, its probably just as good if not better than any textbook I've encountered in statistics. Each chapter usually starts off with a few proofs, then come the examples. You won't just get one or two examples, but many, & if they aren't enough, there are plenty of problems at the end of the chapter to work, all of which have the answers included. This book is geared towards someone that has already taken calculus III, & it is not a basic beginners statistics text. But overall, for the upper level statistics classes, this is one of the best books on the market & is surely a great companion to any regular statistics textbook.

Like other mathematical editions of "Schaum's outlines" the second edition of "Probability And Statistics" is again a book, that is perfectly developed for self-study that leeds you to a fundamental understanding of probability and statistics. It is clearly arranged and many tests help you to understand everything of each chapter :-)

Probability and statistics can be difficult subjects for students, and this Schaum's outline is very helpful both for explaining the theory and showing lots of numerical examples and practice problems in these very much related disciplines. Since a knowledge of probability is necessary to thoroughly understand statistics, that subject is tackled first, in the first four chapters. Statistics is addressed in the last six chapters of the book. The narrative of this book is very thorough, and intersperses explanations with worked out examples throughout. The book starts with basic probability, moves on through random variables, expectation, and special probability functions such as the binomial and Poisson distributions. In the statistics half of the book, there are chapters on sampling and estimation theory, hypotheses testing, curve fitting, regression, correlation, variance analysis, and finally the more advanced topic of nonparametric testing. Appendices offer some valuable distributions and tables. Of course, if you need to study these subjects more in depth such as expectation and detection or random processes, you are going to need other books for further study. However, at just over 400 pages in length, this book provides a good introduction to the topics of probability and statistics for a fraction of what many less enlightening textbooks cost and it is ideal for self-study. I highly recommend it.

I have used this book to teach myself statistics and probability theory in a relatively short period of time. The essentials are well laid out and reinforced with plenty of examples and exercises. I would recommend using a Schaum outline authored by Murray Spiegel for becoming proficient in problem solving in that particular area. I got started this way after reading the book, Indiscrete Thoughts by Gian Carlo Rota.