I'm not a statistician, but I'm very interested in statistics and I'd like to buy a book to keep as a reference. I have a few books on specific subjects (such as The Elements of Statistical Learning for machine learning or Bayesian Data Analysis for...well, Bayesian Data Analysis :) I was also looking for a more generic book.
Freedman's books are often well-considered here:
Advanced statistics books recommendation
What book would you recommend for non-statistician scientists?
Statistics by Freedman, Pisani and Purves (A) is the chosen answer for the latter question, and I was going to buy that. However, I found out about Statistical Models: Theory and Practice (B). The two books seem similar (for what I can tell: Amazon restricts me even from reading the full ToCs...I don't know why). The publication dates are very close. However:
- B is considerably cheaper. I could get A used, though, so if A is clearly better than B, I'm willing to go for A.
- A is longer, but it seems to me that the main chapters missing from B are related to probability. I don't need that part, so if that's the only difference or the main difference, I'd rather buy the cheaper and more transportable B :)
Which book would you suggest I buy?