Rating: 
Summary: Good coverage of basic statistical theory
Review: This is kind of an odd statistics book. Most books at this intermediate level are devoted almost solely to the subject of "mathematical statistics", in other words: estimation, hypothesis testing, regression analysis, etc. Yet for some reason the first half of the book is devoted entirely to elementary probability theory, which should be a prerequisite for reading this book (see Hoel's probability book for a much better treatment of that subject).As far as its coverage of statistics, the discussion of estimation is excellent, and the material on sufficient statistics is the best I've seen. I would agree with other reviewers, however, that the examples could be better. On some topics the explanations are not very well motivated, making it very dry at times. And there is basically no coverage of regression theory. An argument could be made that linear regression belongs in a more basic course, but there could've at least been some coverage of regression beyond the couple pages on nonlinear regression you get here. This was the book used in the class I took, and I felt it was great in spots but could've been a lot better overall. It's not bad for what it does cover, but looking back I wish it could've covered more statistics material. It tries to be a probability+statistics two-in-one book, when really the two subjects deserve their own (more fully covered) book.
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