Statistics Books for Machine Learning

Last Updated on August 14, 2020

Statistical methods are used at each step in an applied machine learning project.

This means it is important to have a strong grasp of the fundamentals of the key findings from statistics and a working knowledge of relevant statistical methods.

Unfortunately, statistics is not covered in many computer science and software engineering degree programs. Even if it is, it may be taught in a bottom-up, theory-first manner, making it unclear which parts are relevant on a given project.

In this post, you will discover some top introductory books to statistics that I recommend if you are looking to jump-start your understanding of applied statistics.

I own copies of all of these books, but I don’t recommend you buy and read them all. As a start, pick one book, but then really read it.

Kick-start your project with my new book Statistics for Machine Learning, including step-by-step tutorials and the Python source code files for all examples.

Let’s get started.