Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Grokking Statistics: A Friendly Guide for Beginners

Grokking Statistics: A Friendly Guide for Beginners

Nield, Thomas

Paperback

ApplicationsGeneral ComputersProgramming

ISBN10: 1633434761
ISBN13: 9781633434769
Publisher: Manning Publications
Published: Oct 20 2026
Pages: 352
Weight: 1.10
Height: 0.93 Width: 7.43 Depth: 9.20
Language: English
Get a free eBook (PDF or ePub) from Manning as well as access to the online liveBook format (and its AI assistant that will answer your questions in any language) when you purchase the print book.

An excellent, playful introduction to foundational statistical ideas and calculations.
--Matthew Housley, Co-author of Fundamentals of Data Engineering

Grokking Statistics makes the core ideas of statistics intuitive, practical, and surprisingly entertaining. Using relatable examples, illustrations, and clear explanations, Thomas Nield shows you how to reason about uncertainty, draw useful conclusions from data, and recognize when the numbers themselves may be misleading. You'll learn to move beyond deterministic thinking and develop the skeptical, questioning mindset that good statistical analysis requires.

Starting with the relationship between samples and populations, you'll build a practical understanding of probability distributions, the normal distribution, the central limit theorem, confidence intervals, hypothesis testing, and linear and logistic regression. Along the way, you'll apply these ideas to examples ranging from manufacturing tolerances and business decisions to tornado data and toddler meltdowns. Python handles the calculations so you can concentrate on what the results mean and when you should trust them.

Just as importantly, Grokking Statistics teaches you to question data itself. You'll learn to look for biased samples, questionable assumptions, misleading metrics, overfitting, p-hacking, and other ways statistical reasoning can go wrong. These are essential practical skills. They matter whether you're evaluating a research finding, analyzing business data, building a software product, or assessing the performance of a machine learning model.

Clear Python examples explain the concepts throughout the book. Thomas's practical, sometimes whimsical approach keeps the focus on understanding rather than memorizing formulas. Reviewer Mark J. Miller of Route.com says, With practical, entertaining examples, you'll learn key principles and skills that will level up your BS detector! Reviewer Thomas Briegel of Plaurag Edelmetalle GmbH calls it an accessible and practical introduction to statistics that avoids intimidating math.

True to the promise of grokking, this book brings your understanding of statistics to a point deep enough to use confidently--and to know how to question conclusions drawn from data. You'll come away ready to make smarter decisions under uncertainty, evaluate claims critically, and put statistical thinking to work wherever data is involved.

What's inside

- Quantify real-world uncertainty

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