Podcasts about statistics

January 26, 2008 7:15 PM

I'm taking statistics math this semester, and I'm wondering if there be any geeky statistics math-related podcasts that will help me wrap my head around this tricky subject matter (and maybe even enjoy it).

P.S. I know about Freakonomics, and it's not mathmatically-dense enough, for lack of a better term.

posted by survivorman to education (9 comments total)

Not a podcast, but I bet you'd like Statistics Hacks. It's a nice collection of statistics tricks and fun problems.
posted by zachlipton at 7:26 PM on January 26

I don't know about podcasts, but as a grad student studying stats at this very moment, I do know that this is a great resource.
posted by messylissa at 7:26 PM on January 26

Seconding the Cartoon Guide to Statistics. Got me through my grad school stats classes. Also, if you are studying regression analysis at all, read "Freakonomics" which will show you the really cool, creative things you can do with regressions.
posted by lunasol at 7:52 PM on January 26 [1 favorite]

Also, I believe the Freakonomics guys have a podcast.
posted by lunasol at 7:52 PM on January 26

And while we're all giving you books even though you wanted podcasts, How to Lie With Statistics is a classic every educated person should read.
posted by zachlipton at 7:53 PM on January 26

Some very helpful answers thus far. Thank you.
posted by survivorman at 8:22 PM on January 26

Everyone who has mentioned the Cartoon Guide to Statistics by Larry Gonick is right. This is a wonderful book. It presents a basic overview of probability and statistics. The book explains what the basic statistics formulas (such as for variance) mean in English. It covers some fairly complicated topics like confidence intervals and regression analysis. Read the Cartoon Guide along with your text book.

The key to doing well in stats is to practice solving lots and lots of problems. You can do well in a course if you can solve the actual math problems. To get a good understanding of the underlying concepts (e.g., sampling distributions and variance) can take a long time. I know for me that it was only after taking a few statistics courses that the fundamental concepts started to click.
posted by Jasper Friendly Bear at 9:14 PM on January 26 [1 favorite]

Here is Berkley's Introduction to Stats lectures available as MP3's.
posted by bigmusic at 10:49 PM on January 26 [1 favorite]

Not a podcast, but try Andrew Gelman's blog.
posted by Coventry at 2:23 AM on January 27