Rating: 8.2/10. Textbook on classical statistical methods for working with time series, mainly focusing on autoregressive, moving average, exponential smoothing, and regression-based models. This book is overall fairly easy to read while being mathematically rigorous and provides examples of working with time series in various statistical packages like JMP, SAS, and R. The examples are…
All Book Reviews
The Vegetarian by Han Kang
Rating: 8.0/10. A fairly short novel, about 120 pages, written by a South Korean author who won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2024. It centers around a young woman, Young-hye, and is split into three parts that examine this character from multiple perspectives. It is hard to say what this novel is about, and…
A Radical Approach to Lebesgue’s Theory of Integration by David M. Bressoud
Rating: 8.0/10. Book on measure theory and integration and serves as a good complement to the book “Measure, Integral, Probability.” I liked it because, rather than being technical all the time, it justifies the theory from a historical context – nobody really set out to invent measure theoretic integration, instead all these ideas were first…
Tangi by Witi Ihimaera
Rating: 7.6/10. A notable New Zealand novel, published in 1973, it is one of the first novels by a Maori writer. It describes a tangi (a funeral), and there is not much plot in the novel, instead it follows the protagonist as he discovers his father has died, prompting him to return to his home…
Measure, Integral and Probability by Marek Capinski and Ekkehard Kopp
Rating: 7.8/10. A textbook on measure theory, which serves as the foundation of probability and also has applications to integration and mathematical finance. A measure essentially defines the length or area of a set in a formal and consistent way, even with infinite sets that arise in continuous probability. When defined in a naive way,…
Generations by Jean M. Twenge
Rating: 7.7/10. Generations: The Real Differences Between Gen Z, Millennials, Gen X, Boomers, and Silents – and What They Mean for America’s Future by Jean M. Twenge This book examines generational differences and how values have changed over time, focusing on America. Overall, differences in generations are caused by major world events and technological advancements,…
The Future is Degrowth by Schmelzer, Vetter, Vansintjan
Rating: 7.3/10. The Future is Degrowth: A Guide to a World Beyond Capitalism by Matthias Schmelzer, Andrea Vetter, Aaron Vansintjan Book about the degrowth movement, which has gained some support in activist communities. There are different conceptions of what degrowth entails, but we generally propose the idea that GDP growth should be decoupled from progress…
All of Statistics by Larry Wasserman
Rating: 8.3/10. All of Statistics: A Concise Course in Statistical Inference by Larry Wasserman This textbook is as an introduction to statistics for those who have a solid foundation in mathematics but lack knowledge of statistics. It covers a wide range of topics quite rapidly within 400 pages, resulting in a rather brief treatment of…
Our Lives in Their Portfolios by Brett Christophers
Rating: 7.9/10. Our Lives in Their Portfolios: Why Asset Managers Own the World by Brett Christophers Book about private equity, how it works on investments in housing and infrastructure, and its effect on society. Private equity has bought lots of housing and capital infrastructure, managing them in an unregulated way: eg, they are not hesitant…
The Worlds I See by Fei-Fei Li
Rating: 7.6/10. The Worlds I See: Curiosity, Exploration, and Discovery at the Dawn of AI by Fei-Fei Li A fairly easy-to-read memoir by Fei-Fei Li, a computer vision researcher most well-known for her work on ImageNet. The first half of the book discusses her childhood, focusing on her experiences as an immigrant to America, while…
Sampling: Design and Analysis by Sharon L. Lohr
Rating: 8.3/10. This is my notes from the second edition of the textbook from 2009. It provides a solid foundation of sampling, survey design, and statistical methods for analyzing errors and variance. Some weak points include the fact that all code examples are in SAS instead of R, which is more popular for statistical computing….
Zoned in the USA by Sonia A. Hirt
Rating: 7.5/10. Zoned in the USA: The Origins and Implications of American Land-Use Regulation by Sonia A. Hirt This book examines the history of zoning, especially focusing on America and how it reached the current state where large areas are mandated for single-family house zoning, something relatively uncommon globally. The strict government regulation in this…