Probability and Statistics for Data Science

Norman Matloff is a professor of computer science at the University of California, Davis, and was formerly a statistics professor there. He is on the editorial boards of the Journal of Statistical Software and The R Journal. His book Statistical Regression and Classification: From Linear Models to Machine Learning was the recipient of the Ziegel Award for the best book reviewed in Technometrics in 2017. He is a recipient of his university's Distinguished Teaching Award.

"I quite like this book. I believe that the book describes itself quite well when it says: Mathematically correct yet highly intuitive…This book would be great for a class that one takes before one takes my statistical learning class. I often run into beginning graduate Data Science students whose background is not math (e.g., CS or Business) and they are not ready…The book fills an important niche, in that it provides a self-contained introduction to material that is useful for a higher-level statistical learning course. I think that it compares well with competing books, particularly in that it takes a more "Data Science" and "example driven" approach than more classical books."~Randy Paffenroth, Worchester Polytechnic Institute"This text by Matloff (Univ. of California, Davis) affords an excellent introduction to statistics for the data science student…Its examples are often drawn from data science applications such as hidden Markov models and remote sensing, to name a few… All the models and concepts are explained well in precise mathematical terms (not presented as formal proofs), to help students gain an intuitive understanding."~CHOICE

• 1. Basic Probability Models. 2. Discrete Random Variables. 3. Discrete Parametric Distribution Families. 4. Introduction to Discrete Markov Chains. 5. Continuous Probability Models. 6. The Family of Normal Distributions. 7. The Family of Exponential Distributions. 8. Random Vectors and Multivariate Distributions. 9. Statistics: Prologue. 10. Introduction to Confidence Intervals. 11. Introduction to Significance Tests. 12. General Statistical Estimation and Inference 13. Predictive Modeling