Statistical Rethinking

这本书最独特的地方，在于它把贝叶斯统计当成一种“看世界的方式”来教，而不是又一门推导公式的课。作者刻意剥离了繁琐的数学细节，用大量可运行的R和Stan代码，逼读者亲手完成那些被软件自动化的建模步骤，从而真正理解每一步在做什么。读者反复提及的，是它对“刚学贝叶斯时会遇到却几乎没人解答的哲学问题”的坦诚讨论——如何面对过拟合、如何在模型之间做取舍、如何处理测量误差与缺失数据。它适合那些不满足于调用现成函数、想知道自己建模依据的人；但对追求严格数学深度、想系统学习推导的读者，它可能显得“不够深”。翻开它之前，请放下对公式的执念，带上对“为什么这样建模”的好奇。

Richard McElreath is the director of the Department of Human Behavior, Ecology, and Culture at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. He is also a professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of California, Davis. His work lies at the intersection of evolutionary and cultural anthropology, specifically how the evolution of fancy social learning in humans accounts for the unusual nature of human adaptation and extraordinary scale and variety of human societies.