Frequentist Statistics – Recommended References for Those Well-Versed in Modern Probability Theory

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Coming from a rigorous background in analysis and modern probability theory, I find Bayesian statistics straightforward and easy to understand, and frequentist statistics incredibly confusing and unintuitive. It seems that frequentists are really doing bayesian statistics, except with "secret priors" that aren't well motivated or carefully defined.

On the other hand, a lot of great statisticians who understand both perspectives ascribe to the frequentist perspective, so there must be something there that I just don't understand. Rather than giving up and declaring myself a Bayesian, I'd like to learn more about the frequentist perspective to try to really "grok" it.

What are some good references for learning frequentist statistics from a rigorous perspective? Ideally I'm looking for definition-theorem-proof type books, or perhaps hard problem sets that, by solving them, I would gain the right mindset. I've read a lot of the more "philosophical stuff" one might find searching the internet – wiki pages, random pdfs from .edu/~randomprof sites, etc – and it hasn't helped.

Best Answer

For your background, I would start out with: Essentials of Statistical Inference, which is short and reasonably complete. The preface says it is written for a first intro to math stat for oxford 4th year math students. It also includes some very modern ideas.

But you also need something more conceptual, and you cannot find better than Sir David Cox to teach this: D R Cox: "Principles of Statistical Inference" Cambridge UP 2006. This is very rigorous, but in a statistical, not mathematical sense. This is about the concepts, about the Why's and not the How's!

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