Giuseppe Schinaia insegna presso l'Università di Roma "La Sapienza"
The book contains a simple presentation of the basic principles of what is usually called mathematical statistics. However, only relevant results are followed by their proofs and, even then, the underlying mathematics only requires a basic knowledge of calculus, as measure-theoretical issues have been carefully avoided. The reader is to be acquainted with some probability theory, whose basic principles are summarized in appendix A, while appendices B and C present an overview of probability distributions and asymptotic theory. As a “side dish” I thought it worthwhile to include a chapter on some simple non-parametric techniques, as they provide a useful, first insight into what I consider “independent thinking” in statistics and, therefore, a good start to develop quantitative reasoning, which should be the ultimate goal of statistics teaching and learning.