Appendix A - The literature

Summary

Of the vast literature, we point to some works which we have found useful, enlightening or just plain entertaining. We bin these into six types (somewhat arbitrarily as there is much overlap): popular, the basic text, the rigorous text, the data analysis manual, the texts considering statistical packages, and the statistics treatments of specialist interest to astronomers.

1. The classic popular books have legendary titles: How to Lie with Statistics (Huff, 1973), Facts from Figures (Moroney, 1965), Statistics in Action (Sprent, 1977) and Statistics without Tears (Rowntree, 1981). They are all fun. To this list we can now add The Lady Tasting Tea: How Statistics Revolutionized Science in the Twentieth Century (Salsburg, 2002), an entertaining exposition of the development of modern statistics; Struck by Lightning: the Curious World of Probabilities (Rosenthal, 2006); Making Sense of Statistics: A Non-mathematical Approach (Wood, 2003), and Dicing with Death: Chance, Risk and Health (Senn, 2003). This latter is a devastatingly blunt, funny and erudite exposition of the importance and application of statistics in decision processes which may affect the lives of millions. As a popular book it is heavy-going in parts; but for scientists, budding or mature, it is a rewarding read.

2. Textbooks come in types (a) and (b), both of which cover similar material for the first two-thirds of each book. They start with descriptive or summarizing statistics (mean, standard deviation), the distributions of these statistics, and move to the concept of probability and hence statistical inference and hypothesis testing, including correlation of two variables. […]