Learning Statistics on Youtube

Youtube.com is the second most accessed website in the world (surpassed only by its parent, google.com). It has a whopping 1 billion unique views a month. [1, 2] It is a force to be reckoned with. In the video sharing platform, there are many brilliant and hard-working content creators producing high-quality and free educational videos that students and academics alike can enjoy. I made a survey on Youtube content that could be useful for those interested in learning Statistics, and I listed and categorized them below.

Truth be told, this post is a glorified Google search in many respects. In any case, I had intended for a long time to gather this information as to facilitate the often laborious task of finding pertinent resources for learning statistical science in a non-static format (i.e., videos) that is easily accessible, high-quality, instructive and free.

Another motivation had to do with my teaching obligations. In this fall, I will teach a graduate course in Stats with R. To this end, I considered becoming a content creator myself, as to allow students to access the course’s content from the convenience of their homes. In this process, I found some excellent statistical courses on Youtube. Some were really useful in terms of their organization, others in terms of content, interesting explanations, pedagogical skills, availability of materials, etc. Altogether, searching for resources was a very instructive experience, whose fruits should be shared.

Importantly, in this process, I learned that youtube is not short of ‘introductory course on ___.’ Not of Statistics, Probability or R, anyways. Which is a good thing. And often, you even see these three together. Also in abundance, are courses on the ABC’s of probability theory, classical statistics (i.e., up to ANOVA, ANCOVA), and on basics of applied statistics (e.g., Econometrics, Biostatistics, and Machine Learning). Indeed, Machine Learning (mostly through Data Science) is really well represented on Youtube.

Due to the sheer amount of channels, I organized them into three broad categories: use of R as statistical software, use of other statistical software, and lecture format only. I also listed each channel’s content/topic, whether authors provided slides, code, additional materials online (with links), and relevant remarks.

1. LEARNING STATISTICS WITH R

YOUTUBE CHANNEL	CONTENT	SOFTWARE	ONLINE MATERIALS?	REMARKS
Mike Marin	[Intro] Basic Stats in R	R	Yes, good materials	University British Columbia
Michael Butler	[Intro] to R and Stats, Modern	R	Yes	Good intro to R + Exercises
EZLearn	[Intro] Basic Stats in R	R	Exercises w/ solutions	–
Renegade Thinking: Courtney Brown	[Intro] Undergraduate Stats	R	Yes	Good Lectures
Barton Poulson	[Intro] Classical Stats, Programming & Solved Exercises	R, Python, SPSS	Yes	Gives intro to Python, R, SPSS andlaunching an OLP
Ed Boone	[Intro] Basic R and SAS	R & SAS	Yes	–
Lynda.com	[Intro] Basics of R and Descriptives	R	Yes	OLP
Bryan Craven	[Intro] Basic Stats in R	R	No	–
Laura Suttle (Revolution)	[Intro] R tour for Beginners	R	No	–
Phil Chan	[Intro] Classical and Bio-stats	R, SPSS, Eviews	No	–
Gordon Anthony Davis	[Intro] R Programming Tutorial	R	No	Thorough intro for beginners
David Langer	[Intro] Basics of R	R	No	Excellent pedagogical Skills
MrClean1796	[Intro] Math, Physics and Statistics, lecture & R	R	No	–
Brian Caffo	Advanced & Bio-Stats, Reproducible Research	R	Yes, CourseraandGitHub	Professor of Bio-statistics, Johns Hopkins Univ.
Abbass Al Sharif	In-depth Machine Learning	R	Yes	Excellent lectures and resources
James Scott	Advanced Stats	R	Yes, and GitHub	Several Course Materials on GitHub
Derek Kane	Machine Learning	R	Yes	Excellent Videos, Fourier Analysis, Time series Forecasting
DataCamp	Programming, DataViz, R Markdown [free]	R	Yes, paid. 9$ for students	–
Maria Nattestad	DataViz	R	Personal Website	Plotting in R for Biologists
Christoph Scherber	Mixed, GLM, GLS, Contrasts	R	Yes	–
Librarian Womack	Time Series, DataViz, BigData	R	Yes, Course and .R	Materials online
Jarad Niemi	R Workflow, Bayesian, Statistical Inference	R	Yes	–
Justin Esarey	Bayesian, Categorical and Longitudinal Data, Machine Learning	R	Yes, lots and lots	Political Scientist
Jeromy Anglim	Research Methods	R	Blog:Psych & Stats, GitHub	+ Rmeetups and Notes onGelman, Carlin, Stern, and Rubin
Erin Buchanan	Under- & post-graduate Stats, SEM	R, G*Power, Excel	Yes	Excellent pedagogical strategies
Richard McElreath	From Basic to Advanced Bayesian Stats	R and Stan	Yes, lots	Book lectures
edureka	Data Science	R, Hadoop, Python	Yes, online learning plattaform	R Intro w/ Hadoop [free]
Learn R	R programming, stats on webiste	R, Python	Yes, andOne R Tip A Day	On website, lots of starter’s code
Data School	Machine Learning, Data Manipulation (dplyr)	Python, R	Yes, dplyr	Machine Learning with Hastie & Tibshirani
Econometrics Academy	Statistics (via Econometrics)	R, STATA, SPSS	Yes	OLP, Excellent Materials and Resources
Jalayer Academy	Basic Stats + Machine Learning	R, Excel	No	Also Lectures
Michael Levy	Authoring from R, Markdown, Shiny	R	No	–
Melvin L.	Machine Learning, R Programming, PCA, DataViz	R, Python, Gephi	No	Interesting Intro for Spark
OpenIntroOrg	Intro to Stats/R plus Inference, Linear Models, Bayesian	R	Yes,CourseraandOpenIntro	Coursera Courses, Resources in SAS

2. LEARNING STATISTICS WITH OTHER SOFTWARE

YOUTUBE CHANNEL	CONTENT	SOFTWARE	ONLINE MATERIALS?	REMARKS
Jonathan Tuke	Basic Stats	Matlab	No	–
Saiful Yusoff	PLS, Intro to MaxQDA	SmartPLS, MaxQDA	Yes	BYU
James Gaskin	SEM, PLS, Cluster	SPSS, AMOS, SmartPLS	Yes	BYU
Quantitative Specialists	Basic Stats	SPSS	No	Upbeat videos
RStatsInstitute	Basic Stats	SPSS	No	Instructor at Udemy
how2stats	Basic Stats, lecture and software demonstrations	SPSS	Yes	Complete Classical Stats
BrunelASK	Basic Stats	SPSS		–
The Doctoral Journey	Basic Stats	SPSS	Yes	–
StatisticsLectures	Basic Stats, lecture format	SPSS	Yes	discontinued, but thorough basic stats
Andy Field	Classical Stats, lecture and software demonstrations	SPSS	Yes, registration needed	Used heavely in Social Sciences
Quinnipiac University:Biostatistics	Classical Stats	SPSS	No	–
The RMUoHP Biostatistics	Basic and Bio-Stats	SPSS, Excel	No	–
PUB708 Team	Classical Statistics	SPSS, MiniTab	No	–
Professor Ami Gates	Classical Stats	SPSS, Excel, StatCrunch	Yes	–
H. Michael Crowson	Intro and Basic Stats in several Softare	SPSS, STATA, AMOS, LISREAL	Yes?	–
Math Guy Zero	Classical Stats + SEM	SPSS, Excel, PLS	No	Lots of materials
BayesianNetworks	Bayesian Statistics, SEM, Causality	BayesianLab	Yes	–
Khan Academy	Programming 101	Python	Yes	–
Mike’s SAS	Short intro to SAS, SPSS	SAS, SPSS	No	–
Christian A. Wandeler	Basic Stats	PSPP	No	–

3. LECTURES ON STATISTICS

YOUTUBE CHANNEL	CONTENT	SOFTWARE	ONLINE MATERIALS?	REMARKS
Stomp On Step 1	[Intro] Bio-Stats, Basic	Lectures	Yes	USMLE
Khan Academy	[Intro] Basic Stats, lecture format	Lectures	Yes	–
Joseph Nystrom	[Intro] Basic Stats	Lectures	Yes	Active & unorthodox teaching
Statistics Learning Centre	[Intro] Basic Stats	Lectures	Yes	Register to access materials
Brandon Foltz	[Intro] Basic Stats	Lectures	soon	Excellent visuals
David Waldo	[Intro] Probability Theory	Lectures	No	–
Andrew Jahn	[Intro] Basic Stats	Lectures	No	FSL, AFNI and SPM [Neuro-immaging]
Professor Leonard	[Intro] Stats and Maths	Lectures	No	Excellent pedagogical skills
ProfessorSerna	[Intro] Basic Stats	Lectures	No	–
Harvard University	[Intro] Thorough Introduction to Probability Theory and Statistics	Lectures	No	In-depth
Victor Lavrenko	Machine Learning, Probabilistic, Cluster, PCA, Mixture Models	Lectures	Yes, very complete	Excellent Content, and lots of it
Jeremy Balka’s Statistics	Graduate-level Classical Stats, Lecture	Lectures	Yes, very thorough	Excellent altogether,p-value vid great!
Methods Manchester Uni	Discussion on a wide variety of methods, SEM	Lectures	Yes	Methods Fair
Steve Grambow	Series on Inference	Lectures	Yes	Great Lectures on Inference [DUKE]
Statistics Corner: Terry Shaneyfelt	Statistical Inference	Lectures	Yes	from a clinical perspective
Michel van Biezen	Complete Course of Stats	Lectures	Yes, 1, 2, 3	Thorough and complete, plus Physics and Maths
Oxford Education	Bayesian statistics: a comprehensive course	Lectures	Yes	–
Nando de Freitas	Machine Learning	Lectures	Yes, alsohere and here	–
Alex Smola	Machine Learning	Lectures	Yes, slides and code	–
Abu (Abulhair) Saparov	Machine Learning	Lectures	Yes	Taught by Tom Mitchell and Maria-Florina Balcan
Geoff Gordon	Machine Learning, Optimization	Lectures	Yes	–
MIT OpenCourseWare	Probability Theory,Stochastic Processes	Lectures	Yes, here,and here	–
Alexander Ihler	Machine Learning	Lectures	Yes, along w/ many others classes	–
Royal Statistical Society	Important Statistical issues	Lectures	Yes	Interesting topics
Ben Lambert	Graduate and Advanced Stats	Lectures	No	Asymptotic Behaviour of Estimators, SEM, EFA
DeepLearning TV	Machine (and Deep) Learning	Lectures	No	Excellent pedagogical skills
Mathematical Monk	Machine Learning, and Probability Theory	Lectures	No	–

FINAL REMARKS

These collection of channels listed here are not supposed to be exhaustive. If I have neglected a youtube channel that you think should figure in this list, please let me know via the contact form atthe bottom of this link. Thank you very much!