Allen B. Downey

I do a lot of statistics, but I use mostly frequentist techniques - Bayesian techniques usually seem to me like more trouble than they are worth, so I wanted to read the author's "Think Bayes", also published in paperback by O'Reilly, but all the code in it is Python. So I got this first. I have been coding since 1971, and at this late stage, most programming languages bore me - I'm almost always more interested in the interface, and I have used Hypercard and Realbasic (now Xojo) for that reason. Anyway, this book is pretty good. My only complaint is that it doesn't actually tell you the nitty-gritty of getting started in Python - that it comes with the Mac operating system (but isn't version 3), and that you can use IDLE, and how other IDE's work etc. Fortunately, in modern times, if you just go to the Python web site, or better, to YouTube, you can find a lot of very good instructional material and fill in the blanks.… (mere)