Curveball by Jim Albert and Jay Bennett
I recently finished reading 'Curveball: Baseball, Statistics, and the Role of Chance in the Game' by Albert and Bennett. A truly remarkable book. If you are, as I am, into quantitative analysis, and lean towards empirics first, then you will enjoy the book. It introduces a number of really useful statistical concepts truly in passing. Readers will hopefully get 'it' without feeling being spoon-fed. In fact, there is virtually no algebra in the entire book. Most analysis is done by simulation (which I really dig) -- a reasonable model is hypothesized, data is generated by simulation according to the hypothesize model (and parameters), and if not apparent conflict is seen between the originally observed and the generated data, the model is retained. This book could be used as the basis for a truly neat statistics / data analysis course.

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European mirror site
Thanks to the good folks at RedIRIS in Madrid, Spain, iso files for my Quantian project can now be accessed by http and ftp from a new European mirror site.

/computers/linux/debian/quantix | permanent link