Stat professor stunned: outside a PhD, no one actually works through a classic textbook
shakoistsLog · x · 2026-09-22
Two parallel anecdotes about learning the hard way: one person wanting to learn statistics went straight for the classic Statistical Inference and solved its problems, and a stats professor said he'd never seen anyone outside a PhD do that. In the quoted original story, the author — a non-biology major — landed a job in an immunology lab, asked his PI how to learn the field, was told to read Charles Janeway's Immunobiology, bought it, and read it cover to cover; no previous undergrad hire had ever done so.
The takeaway: the fastest path into a field is often just reading its authoritative textbook and doing the exercises — rare precisely because almost nobody actually does it.
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