Statistica. Dati, numeri e l'interpretazione della realtà

by David J. Hand

In un mondo dove tutto può essere monitorato e misurato, la grande sfida dei prossimi anni sarà analizzare, dare un senso e usare con intelligenza la montagna di dati raccolti. David J. Hand ci dimostra in questo libro che sotto la crosta dura dei numeri e delle percentuali pulsa una strana e potente vitalità. Già oggi la statistica è alla base di quasi ogni attività umana, anche quando non ce ne rendiamo conto: dalle sperimentazioni cliniche nella ricerca medica ai modelli di rischio elaborati dalle società finanziarie, fino all'analisi degli sterminati database accumulati durante le osservazioni cosmologiche. Non è esagerato dire allora che in un mondo che sarà sempre più dominato, quasi travolto, da un flusso costante e ingovernabile di informazioni, la statistica rappresenterà la nostra àncora di salvezza per leggere, decifrare e interpretare la realtà. Uno strumento indispensabile per isolare schemi e relazioni; e infine per decidere.

Genres: Mathematics, Nonfiction

150 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 5, 2010

About the author

David J. Hand is Senior Research Investigator and Emeritus Professor of Mathematics at Imperial College, London, and Chief Scientific Advisor to Winton Capital Management. He is a Fellow of the British Academy, and a recipient of the Guy Medal of the Royal Statistical Society. He has served (twice) as President of the Royal Statistical Society, and is on the Board of the UK Statistics Authority. He has published 300 scientific papers and 25 books: his next book, The Improbability Principle, is due out in February 2014. He has broad research interests in areas including classification, data mining, anomaly detection, and the foundations of statistics. His applications interests include psychology, physics, and the retail credit industry - he and his research group won the 2012 Credit Collections and Risk Award for Contributions to the Credit Industry. He was made OBE for services to research and innovation in 2013.

Reviews

[Moon Captain]

I am currently in part 2 of a general statistics class at community college. There is no instructor for my class, no lecture period, because it's all online. This book helped me understand in a general way the purpose of all the tests and how data are analysed. It was a quick and easy read and I'm glad I found it

[Judith]

It's not the textbook we're using, but I figure another new Stats book from the library couldn't hurt.

[James D Smith]

Valuable read, not profound.

[Brendan]

I didn't read all of this, I was looking for statistical mechanicanics ( which is actually probability )

[Daniel]

I thought it was a solid book. I enjoy learning about mat. I just wish I understood more of what I read. I need to read a lot more about math.