Reading List
Andrew Gelman
Statistician and Political Scientist
Andrew Gelman is Higgins Professor of Statistics and a professor of political science at Columbia. He read mathematics and physics at MIT and took his doctorate at Harvard under Donald Rubin. He co-wrote Bayesian Data Analysis, a standard text, and Red State, Blue State, Rich State, Poor State, which took apart how Americans actually vote by income. His blog has spent two decades examining published research that does not hold up, which shapes how he reads.
01
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How Animals Work
by Knut Schmidt-Nielsen
“That’s about right. It’s statistical because it’s full of graphs. Schmidt-Nielsen’s books have graphs of metabolic rates versus running speed and flying speed for different animals, exhaled air temperature of lizards, all sorts of things.” — via Interview, January 2011
02
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How to Talk So Kids Will Listen and Listen So Kids Will Talk
by Adele Faber and Elaine Mazlish
“Why is it so hard to do the right thing? It’s so true in many aspects of life. It’s easier to tick somebody off than to say something nice. Why is that? It doesn’t make sense, that it would be so difficult to do the constructive thing. Often it takes a lot of work. It’s just a wonderful book. As this is one of those rare occasions when I’m allowed to recommend books to people, I thought I’d better put it on the list.” — via Interview, January 2011
03
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Judgment Under Uncertainty
Heuristics and Biases
by Daniel Kahneman, Paul Slovic, Amos Tversky · 1982 · Non-Fiction
“What they found is that the pros were getting it wrong.” — via Interview, January 2011
04
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The Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract
by Bill James · 1985 · Non-Fiction
“One of my inspirations to become a statistician was reading” — via Interview, January 2011
05
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The Honest Rainmaker
by A. J. Liebling · 1953 · Non-Fiction
“Liebling is one of the great writers of all time and I felt that this particular book had strong statistical content.” — via Interview, January 2011