David S. Brown - Statistics and Data Visualization Using R: The Art and Practice of Data Analysis

• David S. Brown
• University of Colorado Boulder

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This book is for several audiences. Primarily, the book is for the beginner. It assumes no prior knowledge of statistics or calculus, yet having a solid background in either does not make the exercise unprofitable. The book stems from a large Introduction to Quantitative Methods course I taught at the University of Colorado. It is a required class for political science majors who need to read, understand, and critically examine the growing amount of quantitative evidence. Our sincere hope in the class is to arm students with a set of skills to help solve problems.

Like a biologist uses an electron microscope, the data analyst uses R, an object-oriented statistical language that has established a strong foothold in private industry, primarily among data scientists. While learning statistics with pencil and paper is admirable and advantageous pedagogically, students must be armed with a state-of-the-art tool in this era of Big Data. The book is designed for the reader to download the accompanying data and follow along. The code provides, in my experience, an excellent set of commands that many beginning, intermediate, and advanced analysts can use.

For those with more experience, the book presents an approach that emphasizes how simple analyses can generate better questions through the back-and-forth between description, theory, and evidence. The book encourages formulating hypotheses, looking at the evidence, then generating additional hypotheses from that evidence. A deep understanding of the material is demonstrated by the reader, in my opinion, when a hypothesis is constructed to ask the next question. More than learning code, more than understanding probability theory, this book seeks to foster a never-ending cycle of discovery characterized by describing what we see, formulating a hypothesis, testing it empirically, then generating the next question or hypothesis. In that sense, even those with more technical facility can benefit.