Statistics for Physical Sciences: An Introduction

Statistics for Physical Sciences is an informal, relatively short, but systematic, guide to the more commonly used ideas and techniques in statistical analysis, as used in physical sciences, together with explanations of their origins. It steers a path between the extremes of a recipe of methods with a collection of useful formulas, and a full mathematical account of statistics, while at the same time developing the subject in a logical way. The book can be read in its entirety by anyone with a basic exposure to mathematics at the level of a first-year undergraduate student of physical science and should be useful for practising physical scientists, plus undergraduate and postgraduate students in these fields.

Table of Contents:
Preface, Acknowledgements, Statistics, Experiments, and Data, Probability, Probability Distributions: Basic Concepts Probability Distributions: Examples, Sampling and Estimation, Sampling Distributions associated with the Normal Distribution, Point Estimation I: Maximum Likelihood, Point Estimation II: Least-Squares Method, Point Estimation III: Other Methods, Confidence Intervals and Regions, Hypothesis Testing, Appendices, Summary of Distribution Properties, Miscellaneous Mathematics, Orthogonal Polynomials, Optimization of Functions of Several Variables, Statistical Tables ,Solutions to Problems, Bibliography, Index

About the Author :
Prof. Brian R. Martin graduated from Birmingham University with a BSc in Physics and then moved to University College London (1962-1965) to take a PhD in Theoretical Physics. He was a Ford Foundation Fellow at the Institute for Theoretical Physics, Copenhagen University, Copenhagen; a NATO Postdoctoral Fellowship at the Neils Bohr Institute, Copenhagen; and a Research Associate in the Physics Department of Brookhaven National Laboratory, New York. Returning to University College London, he served as a Lecturer, then a Reader and Professor, before becoming Head of Department (1993-2004). Professor Martin retired as Professor Emeritus in October 2005.

Review :
"Martin (physics and astronomy, U. College London) has produced an undergraduate textbook that is more thorough than the drivel of statistics that physical science students get — usually as part of some other course — but still not the full theoretical and practical treatment that most students do not have time for and most schools do not teach. He assumes a knowledge of calculus and matrices the level of first-year undergraduate physical science student." --Reference and Research Book News, Inc.