G Jay Kerns has published a 400+ page introductory text on Probability and Statistics. All of the examples and illustrations are done using R (as Jay puts it, “The people at the party are Probability and Statistics; the handshake is R”) so if you want to brush up on your probability and learn R at the same time, this might be a good resource. It would also be great for teaching: Jay wrote the book based on an undergraduate course he gave at Youngstown State University. There’s also a plug-in for R Commander to access some of the methods via dialogs.

Jay’s book is free, in both senses of the word. You can download the PDF for free from Lulu, or purchase a printed copy for just over $30. Jay has also published all of the LaTeX sources if you want to build the book yourself. And if you’re already using R, you can read the book with just three commands:

install.packages(“IPSUR”)

library(IPSUR)

read(IPSUR)

I haven’t read the entire book, but glancing through it, it looks like a comprehensive overview of the basics of Statistics: distributions, hypothesis testing, estimation, linear regression, and even touches on resampling and nonparametric methods.

I did want to point out one minor error on page xiii, though. It’s “We’re not in Kansas any more, Toto”, not “We’re not in Kansas any more, Dorothy”. They’d take away my Rainbow Card if I didn’t mention that. 

G Jay Kearns: Introduction to Probability and Statistics using R