Amazon.com: Think Bayes: Bayesian Statistics in Python (O'reilly): 9781492089469: Downey, Allen B.: Books (original) (raw)

Who Is This Book For?

To start this book, you should be comfortable with Python. If you are familiar with NumPy and pandas, that will help, but I’ll explain what you need as we go. You don’t need to know calculus or linear algebra. You don’t need any prior knowledge of statistics. In Chapter 1, I define probability and introduce conditional probability, which is the foundation of Bayes’s theorem. Chapter 3 introduces the probability distribution, which is the foundation of Bayesian statistics.

In later chapters, we use a variety of discrete and continuous distributions, including the binomial, exponential, Poisson, beta, gamma, and normal distributions. I will explain each distribution when it is introduced, and we will use SciPy to compute them, so you don’t need to know about their mathematical properties.

Working with the Code

Reading this book will only get you so far; to really understand it, you have to work with the code. The original form of this book is a series of Jupyter notebooks. After you read each chapter, I encourage you to run the notebook and work on the exercises. If you need help, my solutions are available.