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The Elements of Statistics with Applications to Economics and the Social Sciences

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The Elements of Statistics: with Applications to Economics and the Social Sciences by James B. Ramsey is an innovative and excellent undergraduate level text on the foundations and reasoning of statistics estimation and inference. This book is written for the curious student who is interested in understanding the basics of statistical analysis, the intuition behind statistical and information processing, and the process of decision making based on some data. Most importantly, in this book Ramsey takes the student through a fascinating voyage of discovery. In this voyage, Ramsey devotes significant effort to explaining what are the fundamental rules underlying most data analyses within the social and natural sciences. This is done without requiring much prior knowledge of calculus and with almost no formal mathematics. Ramsey accomplishes this task by building on a large number of real world examples, some of which he re-evaluates at the end of each chapter. By doing so, he allows the reader (student or researcher) to see the real value of the knowledge just acquired in the most recent chapter. That is, "what can I understand now about that specific problem that I could not understand before." In that way the student is going through an on-going learning process. A process that allows one to understand the data by recognizing what is observed and what is not observed, what is random and what is not random, what process may have generated the data, and what one can infer from the data.
To summarize, once Ramsey expresses his philosophy of approaching statistical analyses, he proceeds to teach statistics in a completely new and innovative way. First, unlike existing undergraduate textbooks, Ramsey teaches the students via a "discovery" approach where each step starts with a new set of questions and the students are guided toward discovering the relevant answer, given the information they have. Second, the text is easy to read and is full with real world examples taken from a large number of disciplines. Finally, the book is equipped with complete software (S-Plus) that provides the necessary tool for the students to practice and understand how to work with real data. This is an ideal undergraduate level textbook. It is a very useful statistical text for the open minded and advanced undergraduate student and provides the teacher with a perfect teaching tool. It is highly recommended.

Amos Golan
Research Professor

James Ramsey has written the ideal introductory statistics text for those with inquisitive minds. Ramsey's The Elements of Statistics with Applications to Economics and the Social Sciences presents an insightful, but accessible approach to the processes of statistical reasoning and problem solving. There are plenty of well-developed and realistic case studies that offer the reader straightforward explanations of the statistical reasoning used in setting up the problem solution. Ramsey does not just present statistics as facts and numbers; the why's and how's behind the use of specific statistical tools required in case studies and other examples are addressed in a straight forward and simple to understand manner. This contrasts most contemporary introductory statistics texts where it seems there is always an attempt to be the biggest encyclopedia of statistical examples. Ramsey's style of exposition offers the reader the depth and perspective required to facilitate both the current and future statistical requirements of the reader. In short, this is one of the few introductory texts that allow the reader to attain a stable grounding in the field of statistics on one hand, and on the other, will still be a useful reference throughout one's professional career. I highly recommend Ramsey's text as both a starter text and as a reference for those looking to clarify their fundamental statistical queries.