10 books like The Art of Statistics

By David Spiegelhalter,

Here are 10 books that authors have personally recommended if you like The Art of Statistics. Shepherd is a community of 8,000+ authors sharing their favorite books with the world.

Shepherd is reader supported.
We may earn an affiliate commission when you buy through links on our website. This is how we fund the project for readers and authors along with our membership program.

Invisible Women

By Caroline Criado Perez,

Book cover of Invisible Women: Data Bias in a World Designed for Men

Ben Hunt-Davis Author Of Will It Make the Boat Go Faster?

From the list on helping you achieve your goals.

Who am I?

I’m an Olympic Gold Medallist rower, performance coach, facilitator, and keynote speaker passionate about high performance, teamwork, and the parallels between sport and business. In 1998 I was part of a consistently underachieving Team GB rowing eight, often placing 7th or 8th. We weren’t the strongest or most talented crew. By changing the way we worked as a team, we managed to turn it around to win Olympic Gold on the waters of Sydney in 2000. Since then, I've specialized in translating Olympic-winning strategies into business success. Specifically focusing on leadership and team development, I work with individuals, teams, and organizations to help them define their gold medal goals and supporting them in achieving them.

Ben's book list on helping you achieve your goals

Discover why each book is one of Ben's favorite books.

Why did Ben love this book?

This book challenged me greatly on a personal and professional level. Invisible Women reveals how in a world built for and by men we are systematically ignoring half of the population, often with disastrous consequences. It has made me consciously act within our business to ensure we are engaging other perspectives in our decision-making processes. Looking beyond what society, media, and advertising want us to see – Perez encourages us to evaluate how we personally can choose to either perpetuate or work towards a society that’s more equal and that sets things up to bring balance into an unbalanced world.

Invisible Women

By Caroline Criado Perez,

Why should I read it?

5 authors picked Invisible Women as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Winner of the 2019 Financial Times and McKinsey Business Book of the Year Award
Winner of the 2019 Royal Society Science Book Prize

Data is fundamental to the modern world. From economic development, to healthcare, to education and public policy, we rely on numbers to allocate resources and make crucial decisions. But because so much data fails to take into account gender, because it treats men as the default and women as atypical, bias and discrimination are baked into our systems. And women pay tremendous costs for this bias, in time, money, and often with their lives.

Celebrated feminist advocate…


Factfulness

By Hans Rosling, Anna Rosling Rönnlund, Ola Rosling

Book cover of Factfulness: Ten Reasons We're Wrong about the World--And Why Things Are Better Than You Think

Lyla Bashan Author Of Global: An Extraordinary Guide for Ordinary Heroes

From the list on becoming a global citizen and ordinary hero.

Who am I?

In 6th grade I did a report about the destruction of the Amazon rainforest, which manifested in a career spanning more than 20 years where I’ve worked for NGOs, the State Department, and the United States Agency for International Development to help make the world a better place. I’ve lived in Guatemala, Tajikistan, Armenia, and Jordan, and travelled throughout Sub-Saharan Africa working on conflict prevention, democracy, governance, and human rights. I’m a firm believer that, no matter your profession, everyone can help make the world a better place – and that’s why I wrote my book and why I read the books on my list – to help make this a reality. 

Lyla's book list on becoming a global citizen and ordinary hero

Discover why each book is one of Lyla's favorite books.

Why did Lyla love this book?

Factfulness was an awesome book to read because working in global affairs and international development can be stressful and sometimes discouraging.

Most of us are in this line of work because we want to help make the world a better place, but it can be a real uphill battle and feel overwhelming at times. There is so much suffering in the world that our efforts sometimes feel like they are not making an impact.

And that is where Factfulness comes in! It helped me take a step back and appreciate the successes and progress that has been made. It gave me perspective and hope and those are two important resources to have as an ordinary hero.

Factfulness

By Hans Rosling, Anna Rosling Rönnlund, Ola Rosling

Why should I read it?

6 authors picked Factfulness as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

'A hopeful book about the potential for human progress when we work off facts rather than our inherent biases.' BARACK OBAMA

'One of the most important books I've ever read - an indispensable guide to thinking clearly about the world.' BILL GATES

*#1 Sunday Times bestseller * New York Times bestseller * Observer 'best brainy book of the decade' * Irish Times bestseller * Guardian bestseller * audiobook bestseller *

Factfulness: The stress-reducing habit of only carrying opinions for which you have strong supporting facts.

When asked simple questions about global trends - why the world's population is increasing; how…


Hello World

By Hannah Fry,

Book cover of Hello World: Being Human in the Age of Algorithms

Tim Harford Author Of The Data Detective: Ten Easy Rules to Make Sense of Statistics

From the list on think clearly about data.

Who am I?

Tim Harford is the author of nine books, including The Undercover Economist and The Data Detective, and the host of the Cautionary Tales podcast. He presents the BBC Radio programs More or Less, Fifty Things That Made The Modern Economy, and How To Vaccinate The World. Tim is a senior columnist for the Financial Times, a member of Nuffield College, Oxford, and the only journalist to have been made an honorary fellow of the Royal Statistical Society.

Tim's book list on think clearly about data

Discover why each book is one of Tim's favorite books.

Why did Tim love this book?

This is a clever and highly readable guide to the brave new world of algorithms: what they are, how they work, and their strengths and weaknesses. It’s packed with stories and vivid examples, but Dr Fry is a serious mathematician and when it comes to the crunch she is well able to show it with clear and rigorous analysis.

Hello World

By Hannah Fry,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Hello World as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

When it comes to artificial intelligence, we either hear of a paradise on earth or of our imminent extinction. It's time we stand face-to-digital-face with the true powers and limitations of the algorithms that already automate important decisions in healthcare, transportation, crime, and commerce. Hello World is indispensable preparation for the moral quandaries of a world run by code, and with the unfailingly entertaining Hannah Fry as our guide, we'll be discussing these issues long after the last page is turned.


The Numbers Game

By Michael Blastland, Andrew Dilnot,

Book cover of The Numbers Game: The Commonsense Guide to Understanding Numbers in the News, in Politics, and in Life

Tim Harford Author Of The Data Detective: Ten Easy Rules to Make Sense of Statistics

From the list on think clearly about data.

Who am I?

Tim Harford is the author of nine books, including The Undercover Economist and The Data Detective, and the host of the Cautionary Tales podcast. He presents the BBC Radio programs More or Less, Fifty Things That Made The Modern Economy, and How To Vaccinate The World. Tim is a senior columnist for the Financial Times, a member of Nuffield College, Oxford, and the only journalist to have been made an honorary fellow of the Royal Statistical Society.

Tim's book list on think clearly about data

Discover why each book is one of Tim's favorite books.

Why did Tim love this book?

I should declare an interest here: I present a BBC Radio show that Blastland and Dilnot created. This book was effectively my “how to” manual on the way into the studio that they had vacated. It’s a wise and varied guide to the power and the pitfalls of data, poetically written and full of subtle wisdoms.

The Numbers Game

By Michael Blastland, Andrew Dilnot,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Numbers Game as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

The Strunk and White of statistics team up to help the average person navigate the numbers in the news

Drawing on their hugely popular BBC Radio 4 show More or Less, journalist Michael Blastland and internationally known economist Andrew Dilnot delight, amuse, and convert American mathphobes by showing how our everyday experiences make sense of numbers.

The radical premise of The Numbers Game is to show how much we already know and give practical ways to use our knowledge to become cannier consumers of the media. If you've ever wondered what "average" really means, whether the scare stories about cancer…


Effective Pandas

By Matt Harrison,

Book cover of Effective Pandas: Patterns for Data Manipulation

Valliappa Lakshmanan Author Of Data Science on the Google Cloud Platform: Implementing End-To-End Real-Time Data Pipelines: From Ingest to Machine Learning

From the list on if you want to become a data scientist.

Who am I?

I started my career as a research scientist building machine learning algorithms for weather forecasting. Twenty years later, I found myself at a precision agriculture startup creating models that provided guidance to farmers on when to plant, what to plant, etc. So, I am part of the movement from academia to industry. Now, at Google Cloud, my team builds cross-industry solutions and I see firsthand what our customers need in their data science teams. This set of books is what I suggest when a CTO asks how to upskill their workforce, or when a graduate student asks me how to break into the industry.

Valliappa's book list on if you want to become a data scientist

Discover why each book is one of Valliappa's favorite books.

Why did Valliappa love this book?

Even if you are ultimately going to be working with terabytes of data, you’ll start out doing exploratory data analysis. The tool that you’ll use for that is most likely going to be Pandas. One of the best investments that you can make when becoming a data scientist is to become a Pandas expert, and there is no better book than Harrison’s to help you get there. Plus, many of the interview questions you will face during the hiring process will probably involve Pandas. Blow your interviewers out of the water by showing them corners of the Pandas library they didn’t even know!

Effective Pandas

By Matt Harrison,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Effective Pandas as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Best practices for manipulating data with Pandas. This book will arm you with years of knowledge and experience that are condensed into an easy to follow format. Rather than taking months reading blogs and websites and searching mailing lists and groups, this book will teach you how to write good Pandas code.

It covers: Series manipulation Creating columns Summary statistics Grouping, pivoting, and cross-tabulation Time series data Visualization Chaining Debugging code and more...


Predictive Analytics

By Eric Siegel,

Book cover of Predictive Analytics: The Power to Predict Who Will Click, Buy, Lie, or Die

Valliappa Lakshmanan Author Of Data Science on the Google Cloud Platform: Implementing End-To-End Real-Time Data Pipelines: From Ingest to Machine Learning

From the list on if you want to become a data scientist.

Who am I?

I started my career as a research scientist building machine learning algorithms for weather forecasting. Twenty years later, I found myself at a precision agriculture startup creating models that provided guidance to farmers on when to plant, what to plant, etc. So, I am part of the movement from academia to industry. Now, at Google Cloud, my team builds cross-industry solutions and I see firsthand what our customers need in their data science teams. This set of books is what I suggest when a CTO asks how to upskill their workforce, or when a graduate student asks me how to break into the industry.

Valliappa's book list on if you want to become a data scientist

Discover why each book is one of Valliappa's favorite books.

Why did Valliappa love this book?

As a data scientist in the industry, it is very helpful to understand the business context behind the problems that you are solving. In many cases, you are trying to predict behavior—who is likely to buy an item, who is likely to click on a link, who is likely to repay a loan, etc.

This book by Eric Siegel is a great introduction to predictive analytics as used in real-life. It will help you frame data science problems in standard ways. For example, suppose you are asked to score sales leads so that salespeople can prioritize their efforts. How would you do it? The common way to frame this problem is to predict the customer lifetime value (LTV) of every sales lead. Before you can do prediction, you have to be able to do analysis though.

The way you estimate the LTV is to break the problem into three sub-problems:…

Predictive Analytics

By Eric Siegel,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Predictive Analytics as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

"Mesmerizing & fascinating..." -The Seattle Post-Intelligencer

"The Freakonomics of big data." -Stein Kretsinger, founding executive of Advertising.com

Award-winning | Used by over 30 universities | Translated into 9 languages

An introduction for everyone. In this rich, fascinating - surprisingly accessible - introduction, leading expert Eric Siegel reveals how predictive analytics (aka machine learning) works, and how it affects everyone every day. Rather than a "how to" for hands-on techies, the book serves lay readers and experts alike by covering new case studies and the latest state-of-the-art techniques.

Prediction is booming. It reinvents industries and runs the world. Companies, governments, law…


Book cover of Fundamentals of Data Visualization: A Primer on Making Informative and Compelling Figures

Valliappa Lakshmanan Author Of Data Science on the Google Cloud Platform: Implementing End-To-End Real-Time Data Pipelines: From Ingest to Machine Learning

From the list on if you want to become a data scientist.

Who am I?

I started my career as a research scientist building machine learning algorithms for weather forecasting. Twenty years later, I found myself at a precision agriculture startup creating models that provided guidance to farmers on when to plant, what to plant, etc. So, I am part of the movement from academia to industry. Now, at Google Cloud, my team builds cross-industry solutions and I see firsthand what our customers need in their data science teams. This set of books is what I suggest when a CTO asks how to upskill their workforce, or when a graduate student asks me how to break into the industry.

Valliappa's book list on if you want to become a data scientist

Discover why each book is one of Valliappa's favorite books.

Why did Valliappa love this book?

It is not enough for a data scientist to be able to analyze data and build ML models. You have to be able to communicate the insights to decision-makers concisely and accurately. This book shows you bad and good visualizations — you’ll be surprised by how often you would have defaulted to the bad way without the guidance provided by this book!

Fundamentals of Data Visualization

By Claus O. Wilke,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Fundamentals of Data Visualization as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Effective visualization is the best way to communicate information from the increasingly large and complex datasets in the natural and social sciences. But with the increasing power of visualization software today, scientists, engineers, and business analysts often have to navigate a bewildering array of visualization choices and options.

This practical book takes you through many commonly encountered visualization problems, and it provides guidelines on how to turn large datasets into clear and compelling figures. What visualization type is best for the story you want to tell? How do you make informative figures that are visually pleasing? Author Claus O. Wilke…


Jumpstart Snowflake

By Dmitry Anoshin, Dmitry Shirokov, Donna Strok

Book cover of Jumpstart Snowflake: A Step-by-Step Guide to Modern Cloud Analytics

Valliappa Lakshmanan Author Of Data Science on the Google Cloud Platform: Implementing End-To-End Real-Time Data Pipelines: From Ingest to Machine Learning

From the list on if you want to become a data scientist.

Who am I?

I started my career as a research scientist building machine learning algorithms for weather forecasting. Twenty years later, I found myself at a precision agriculture startup creating models that provided guidance to farmers on when to plant, what to plant, etc. So, I am part of the movement from academia to industry. Now, at Google Cloud, my team builds cross-industry solutions and I see firsthand what our customers need in their data science teams. This set of books is what I suggest when a CTO asks how to upskill their workforce, or when a graduate student asks me how to break into the industry.

Valliappa's book list on if you want to become a data scientist

Discover why each book is one of Valliappa's favorite books.

Why did Valliappa love this book?

In industry, your data is very likely to live within a data warehouse such as BigQuery, Redshift, or Snowflake. Therefore, to be an effective data scientist in the industry, you should learn how to use data warehouses effectively. 

Once you learn data warehousing and SQL with any one of these products, it is quite easy to pick up another. So which one do you start with?

You can use Snowflake on all three of the major public clouds. Because it’s a standalone product, it is the most similar to a “traditional” data warehouse and can be picked up easily even if you are not familiar with cloud computing. That makes it a good data warehouse to start with, and is the reason my second book pick is this book on Snowflake.

BigQuery is also available on all three major public clouds, but it works best (and is used most commonly)…

Jumpstart Snowflake

By Dmitry Anoshin, Dmitry Shirokov, Donna Strok

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Jumpstart Snowflake as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Explore the modern market of data analytics platforms and the benefits of using Snowflake computing, the data warehouse built for the cloud.

With the rise of cloud technologies, organizations prefer to deploy their analytics using cloud providers such as Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, or Google Cloud Platform. Cloud vendors are offering modern data platforms for building cloud analytics solutions to collect data and consolidate into single storage solutions that provide insights for business users. The core of any analytics framework is the data warehouse, and previously customers did not have many choices of platform to use.

Snowflake was…


Book cover of How to Make the World Add Up: Ten Rules for Thinking Differently About Numbers

Rebecca Campbell Author Of How to Teach Economics to Your Dog: A Quirky Introduction

From the list on economics for people who are allergic to algebra.

Who am I?

I currently teach in the management department of the London School of Economics, and I often need to communicate economic ideas to non-economists. Honestly, I was very nervous about writing (yet another) book about economics. Especially since there are so many around. Two things made me have a go. I really wanted to convey the key arguments with simplicity, translating often complicated and abstruse ideas into straightforward language in a way that didn’t dumb down. Second the world has changed so much in recent years that you need to keep up to date. Quantitative easing, modern monetary theory, and Bitcoin are ideas that just did not exist until recently. 

Rebecca's book list on economics for people who are allergic to algebra

Discover why each book is one of Rebecca's favorite books.

Why did Rebecca love this book?

All politicians should be forced to read this book. Anyone who reads a newspaper should be forced to read this book. My favourite radio programme in the world is Tim Harford’s More or Less. And this book is every bit as good. Harford is clear, incisive, and always interesting. In a world crowded with disinformation and fake news, he shows you how to evaluate the numbers that are thrown at you. To read him is to become a little cleverer. Make this man prime minister someone.

How to Make the World Add Up

By Tim Harford,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked How to Make the World Add Up as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

The Sunday Times Bestseller

'Tim Harford is one of my favourite writers in the world. His storytelling is gripping but never overdone, his intellectual honesty is rare and inspiring, and his ability to make complex things simple - but not simplistic - is exceptional. How to Make the World Add Up is another one of his gems. If you're looking for an addictive pageturner that will make you smarter, this is your book' Rutger Bregman, author of Humankind

'Tim Harford could well be Britain's Malcolm Gladwell'
Alex Bellos, author of Alex's Adventures in Numberland

'If you aren't in love with…


Counting

By Deborah Stone,

Book cover of Counting: How We Use Numbers to Decide What Matters

Carolyn Purnell Author Of The Sensational Past: How the Enlightenment Changed the Way We Use Our Senses

From the list on everyday things we take for granted.

Who am I?

I’m a historian who’s spent far too much time thinking about how the color magenta contributed to climate change and why eighteenth-century humanitarians were obsessed with tobacco enemas. My favorite historical topics—like sensation, color, and truth—don’t initially seem historical, but that’s exactly why they need to be explored. I’ve learned that the things that seem like second nature are where our deepest cultural assumptions and unconscious biases hide. In addition to writing nonfiction, I’ve been lucky enough to grow up on a ranch, live in Paris, work as an interior design writer, teach high school and college, and help stray dogs get adopted.

Carolyn's book list on everyday things we take for granted

Discover why each book is one of Carolyn's favorite books.

Why did Carolyn love this book?

I had never really given much thought to counting until I read this book, but in the very first chapter, Stone made me rethink everything I thought I knew about “one fish, two fish, red fish, blue fish.” She shows that every time we count, we’re making cultural assumptions. For example, what counts as a fish? And what makes the color of the fish more relevant than other features? Counting reveals that while these choices may seem intuitive, basic, and meaningless, they have very real impacts on people’s lives. Especially when we use numbers to measure things like merit, poverty, race, and productivity, those fundamental assumptions matter more than we care to admit.  

Counting

By Deborah Stone,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Counting as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Early in her extraordinary career, Deborah Stone wrote Policy Paradox, a landmark work on politics. Now, in Counting, she revolutionises how we approach numbers and shows how counting shapes the way we see the world. Most of us think of counting as a skill so basic that we see numbers as objective, indisputable facts. Not so, says Stone. In this playful-yet-probing work, Stone reveals the inescapable link between quantifying and classifying, and explains how counting determines almost every facet of our lives-from how we are evaluated at work to how our political opinions are polled to whether we get into…


5 book lists we think you will like!

Interested in statistics, big data, and data science?

8,000+ authors have recommended their favorite books and what they love about them. Browse their picks for the best books about statistics, big data, and data science.

Statistics Explore 24 books about statistics
Big Data Explore 27 books about big data
Data Science Explore 19 books about data science