The Money Mustache Community

Learning, Sharing, and Teaching => Ask a Mustachian => Topic started by: JR on April 23, 2015, 06:06:25 PM

Title: Statistics self learning resources
Post by: JR on April 23, 2015, 06:06:25 PM: Mustachians,
I took a statistics course this semester and found that I really enjoyed the subject. Unfortunately most of the class was not so interested and was doing so poorly that the professor was not able to cover all of the topics he had planned to. The college I am attending (PSU) has a statistics major but the classes are mostly only offered at the main campus (I am attending a satellite). I have found a few resources by simply using Google but I some input from my fellow Mustachians. Does anyone have any resources to recommend that I can use to self study the topic?

Thank you,
JR
Title: Re: Statistics self learning resources
Post by: lovesasa on April 24, 2015, 12:00:57 AM: Khan Academy. Coursera. EdX.
Title: Re: Statistics self learning resources
Post by: MDM on April 24, 2015, 12:22:48 AM: Quote from: lovesasa on April 24, 2015, 12:00:57 AM
Khan Academy. Coursera. EdX.

E.g.,
https://www.khanacademy.org/math/probability
https://www.coursera.org/courses?query=statistics
https://www.edx.org/course/introduction-statistics-descriptive-uc-berkeleyx-stat2-1x

Are these what you "found...by simply using Google"? If so, what do you seek instead?
Title: Re: Statistics self learning resources
Post by: misschedda on April 24, 2015, 08:02:42 AM: Depending on how self-motivated you are, statistics is one of those subjects that can be pretty easy to learn from a book. If you're interested in a non-textbook popular read for fun, try Struck by Lightning: The Curious World of Probabilities.
Title: Re: Statistics self learning resources
Post by: Trudie on April 24, 2015, 08:19:28 AM: I would research free online courses. My husband uses statistics in his research job and just took a free course online. I think the prof was from Harvard.
Title: Re: Statistics self learning resources
Post by: Jouer on April 24, 2015, 08:32:14 AM: Is PSU Penn State? They have online stats courses - I was thinking of getting my masters there online.

I second EdX. Pretty cool program....and tons of stats courses available.
Title: Re: Statistics self learning resources
Post by: curler on April 24, 2015, 08:40:12 AM: Buy/Rent/Borrow a text book or two. What exactly do you want to learn/do with the knowledge?
Title: Re: Statistics self learning resources
Post by: KittyFooFoo on April 24, 2015, 12:32:47 PM: Here's a collection of books:

http://hbpms.blogspot.com/2008/05/stage-2-probability-and-statistics.html

The way to learn math is to read books, take handwritten notes on what you read, and do a shitload (ideally all) of the exercises.
Title: Re: Statistics self learning resources
Post by: SwedishChef on April 24, 2015, 12:50:12 PM: All of the suggestions so far are good ones -- Coursera, Khan Academy, MIT Open Courseware, etc. are all great resources. But as someone who does stats and analytics for a living, I also suggest creating a project for yourself to test what you've learned. What are you into? -- sports, finances, politics? Try to research a question you have about the world -- there are so many open-source datasets out there. It's one thing to just play with the mock data they provide in those courses; it's another to have to dig through, clean up, sort, transform, analyze, and present your own raw data.