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I'm going to be starting stats graduate school in a bit, and as someone whose undergraduate degree didn't involve any statistics, can someone recommend a good reference on the intuition behind most of statistics? A lot of books cover the mathematical definitions, but I haven't found something that explains the intuition behind things, nor the best practices.

As an example, in econometrics, Angrist and Pischke's Mostly Harmless Econometrics is a book about best practices in experimental economics. Is there a similar book for statisticians?

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  • $\begingroup$ I quite enjoyed Statistics Done Wrong: amazon.com/Statistics-Done-Wrong-Woefully-Complete/dp/… $\endgroup$
    – Matthew Drury
    Commented Jul 19, 2016 at 18:28
  • $\begingroup$ Related: stats.stackexchange.com/questions/29380/…. The Kennedy book mentioned there is good. Harell's Regression Modeling Strategies might also fit the bill. $\endgroup$
    – dimitriy
    Commented Jul 19, 2016 at 18:50
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    $\begingroup$ Could you explain what you mean by "the intuition" and what "most of statistics" might be? A huge number of books cover theory and explanations; and "most of statistics" couldn't possibly be covered in any single text. $\endgroup$
    – whuber ♦
    Commented Jul 19, 2016 at 19:15

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I've found that Harvey Motulsky's book, Intuitive Biostatistics, to be extremely well written in describing the concepts typically used in the fields of medicine and biostatistics. This isn't a general book on statistics, but many of the methods can be generalized. He spends time on the intuition of a given method and best practices for interpretation.

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