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> Start with Wasserman

If you're referring to "All of Statistics" by Wasserman, then there are some significantly easier textbooks to learn statistics from. Depending on the program, "All of Statistics" is a book used by senior undergrads or grad students. Are there more mathematical heavy stats books, yes, but this isn't a casual read for someone who is trying to learn statistics either.

I like "Probability and Statistics for Engineering and the Sciences" by Devore as an intro book. It covers the basics of probability distributions, maximum likelihood and method of moments estimation, ANOVA, and linear regression. Pre-requisite knowledge is probably multivariable calculus, matrix multiplication, determinants, and eigenvalues.



Devore's book is great. It's sad it gets many negative reviews. In my experience, there are two types of people:

1. Those who want a statistics book to be like a math book: Fewer words and more equations.

2. Those who want a wordy book with little math

Devore's book is in between, which is why I think both camps tend to hate it. It has a decent amount of math, and has quite a bit of text. The text is invaluable: You get information about common rules of thumb. You get insights on why the technique works. Etc.

And the examples/problems are great. So many of them are from real papers/books. You're not working on some contrived example, but on real world problems.




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