16+ Free Data Science Books by William Chen.
From the webpage:
As a data scientist at Quora, I often get asked for my advice about becoming a data scientist. To help those people, I’ve took some time to compile my top recommendations of quality data science books that are either available for free (by generosity of the author) or are Pay What You Want (PWYW) with $0 minimum.
Please bookmark this place and refer to it often! Click on the book covers to take yourself to the free versions of the book. I’ve also provided Amazon links (when applicable) in my descriptions in case you want to buy a physical copy. There’s actually more than 16 free books here since I’ve added a few since conception, but I’m keeping the name of this website for recognition.
The authors of these books have put in much effort to produce these free resources – please consider supporting them through avenues that the authors provide, such as contributing via PWYW or buying a hard copy [Disclosure: I get a small commission via the Amazon links, and I am co-author of one of these books].
Some of the usual suspects are here along with some unexpected titles, such as A First Course in Design and Analysis of Experiments by Gary W. Oehlert.
From the introduction:
Researchers use experiments to answer questions. Typical questions might be:
- Is a drug a safe, effective cure for a disease? This could be a test of how AZT affects the progress of AIDS
- Which combination of protein and carbohydrate sources provides the best nutrition for growing lambs?
- How will long-distance telephone usage change if our company offers a different rate structure to our customers
- Will an ice cream manufactured with a new kind of stabilizer be as palatable as our current ice cream?
- Does short-term incarceration of spouse abusers deter future assaults?
- Under what conditions should I operate my chemical refinery, given this month’s grade of raw material?
This book is meant to help decision makers and researchers design good experiments, analyze them properly, and answer their questions.
It isn’t short, six hundred and fifty-nine pages, but taken in small doses you will learn a great deal about experimental design. Not only how to properly design experiments but how to spot when they aren’t well designed.
Think of it as training to go big-game hunting in the latest issue of Nature or Science. Adds a bit of competitiveness to the enterprise.