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Allen B. Downey

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Allen Downey is a Professor Emeritus at Olin College and the author of a series of freetextbooks related to software and data science, including Think Python, Think Bayes, and Think Complexity, which are also published by O’Reilly Media. His blog, Probably Overthinking It, features articles on Bayesian probability and statistics. He holds a Ph.D. in computer science from U.C. Berkeley, and M.S. and B.S. degrees from MIT.

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Allen B. Downey's Blog: Probably Overthinking It

The Poincaré Problem

Selection bias is the hardest problem in statistics because it’s almost unavoidable in practice, and once the data have been collected, it’s usually not possible to quantify the effect of selection or recover an unbiased estimate of what you are trying to measure.

And because the effect is systematic, not random, it doesn’t help to collect more data. In fact, larger sample sizes make the problem wo

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Allen B. Downey’s books

Average rating: 4.0 · 3,220 ratings · 387 reviews · 36 distinct works • Similar authors

	Think Python 4.13 avg rating — 1,663 ratings — 57 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Think Stats 3.64 avg rating — 466 ratings — published 2011 — 27 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Think Bayes: Bayesian Statistics in Python 3.94 avg rating — 281 ratings — published 2012 — 14 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Think Complexity: Complexity Science and Computational Modeling 3.91 avg rating — 245 ratings — published 2009 — 13 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Think Java: How to Think Like a Computer Scientist 3.90 avg rating — 169 ratings — published 2016 — 19 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Little Book of Semaphores: The Ins and Outs of Concurrency Control and Common Mistakes 4.39 avg rating — 80 ratings — published 2009	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Probably Overthinking It: How to Use Data to Answer Questions, Avoid Statistical Traps, and Make Better Decisions 4.22 avg rating — 81 ratings	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Think DSP: Digital Signal Processing in Python 4.02 avg rating — 44 ratings — 4 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Think Data Structures: Algorithms and Information Retrieval in Java 3.47 avg rating — 36 ratings — 8 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Think OS: A Brief Introduction to Operating Systems really liked it 4.00 avg rating — 29 ratings — published 2014 — 5 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

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Assassin's Apprentice (Farseer Trilogy, #1)

by Robin Hobb (Goodreads Author)

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Oct 04, 2025 10:15AM

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Waiting on the Moon: Artists, Poets, Drifters, Grifters, and Goddesses

by Peter Wolf (Goodreads Author)

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SNAFU: The Definitive Guide to History’s Greatest Screwups

by Ed Helms

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Allen Downey wants to read Istanbul and the Civilization of the Ottoman Empire (CENTERS OF CIVILIZATION SERIES) by Bernard Lewis	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
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Allen Downey has read The Churn (The Expanse, #3.5) by James S.A. Corey (Goodreads Author)	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
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Quotes by Allen B. Downey (?)

“For all live births, the mean pregnancy length is 38.6 weeks, the standard deviation is 2.7 weeks, which means we should expect deviations of 2-3 weeks to be common.”
― Allen B. Downey, Think Stats

tags: explanations-math

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