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Can anyone recommend a good book on Probability and Statistics? Preferably one that discusses the philosophy more than proofs/equations/solving-specific-problems. I'm looking for a gentle introduction to Probability Theory followed by a discussion of basic statistical techniques and some common distributions.

[sanket]

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Not sure if it fits your description exactly -- I do think it does mostly if not completely -- but "Introduction to Probability" by Grinstead and Snell, published by AMS, is an excellent book on P & S. Here's the website - http://www.dartmouth.edu/~chance/teaching_aids/books_articles/probability_book/book.html ; complete book is available for download for free! Of course, you may chose to buy the print version as well.

The book focusses on giving detailed introductions to concepts with judicious historical and background information about how the techniques/theory developed. In addition, it has numerous examples and exercises. For me the book has proved to be terribly useful in getting some hold on probability. Hope it helps others too.

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Thanks sanket, that looks very interesting!

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Sanket,

Can you write a brief review of the book under the Books section of this forum?

TIA

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@sri: I'll do that.

Btw, one more thing. This book I think is modelled on a 1950 book called "Introduction to Probability Theory and Applications" by William Feller, which this book regards highly. Indeed, if you search for Feller's book, you can see it being called a "classic", "grand-daddy of all probability books", and so on. Feller's book is "available" online on scribd and other places; I am not sure about the legality of it though.