# Mathematical Statistics and Data Analysis

It took me quite some time to decide on an introductory statistics book to read. Unlike calculus or linear algebra, it appears that there is not a general consensus on book(s) for an intermediate level introduction to the subject. Casella and Berger comes close but it is generally regarded as graduate level text. Based on an amazon review and a few Quora answers, I have decided to go with - Mathematical Statistics and Data Analysis by John A. Rice, third edition.

Recently, well not so recently, I completed watching lectures - Introduction to Probability by Prof. Blitzstein and also went through the corresponding book from the same author. Lectures and the problems were great and enriching . These are one of the best lectures that I have went through till now. And an accompanying book with the same flow of contents as in the lectures is as good as it can get. Thanks to Prof. Blitzstein and everyone involved in putting these lectures online. I will write a detailed review on it some time later.

I would suggest problems in the handouts are the minimum number of problems that one should do to convince oneself that he/she got a decent understanding of the content. The problems were carefully chosen and really help in deepening of the concepts. Though I have practiced with these problems in the handouts and they did helped a lot but still felt that I have not practiced enough.

One nice thing about Probability and Statistics, that Prof. Blitzstein also mentioned, is it builds up on the foundations laid out by the earlier topics and it is quite difficult to follow the advanced topics without having a decent hold of the basics.

Thus while going through Mathematical Statistics and Data Analysis, I am hoping to solve atleast 40-50% of the problems given in the book and put these solutions online. Well, the book contains 60 to 70 problems in each chapter, it would take too long to solve all of them :). I will try to solve all the problems whose answers are given in the book as it can help in ensuring some level of correctness.

As with every other post in the blog - there is no guarantee of the correctness - Please let me know if there are any mistakes - I will fix them as soon as I can.

Note: I will start from chapter 7 as I have already covered the earlier content in Probability lectures

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