Statistics for Technology: A Course in Applied Statistics, Third Edition

I must have 50 books on statistics in my collection at all levels and this book is one of the best. If you have some background in calculus and want a concise and well-written introduction to applied statistics this is a must have book. After reading this book, you will begin to doubt the standard textbook paradigm of 1000 page glossy stats books containing one million problems along with cd rom and associated website.

I'm not a mathematician or statistician - just a lowly engineer - but I've compiled quite a library of math and stats book over the years and for my money I haven't seen a basic statistics book that even comes close to this classic from 1983. Chatfield not only knows his subject but knows how to present the concepts clearly and demonstrate their application with interesting and relevant examples. And he writes amazingly well - so well that it may actually startle you if, like me, you've spent many painful hours stumbling through the prose wasteland of most math/stats books. Too bad those expert in the language of mathematics so often exhibit English language skills somewhere between "abysmal" and "pathetic" - fortunately Chatfield's book is a shining counterexample.