The title of this book truly reflects the content that is covered. In the first chapter the authors give a brief description of what hurricanes are and why these natural storms are so important to study now. In addition, they explain what exactly ’climate’ is and describe the term ‘statistics’. The first chapter sets the tone for the rest of the book.

A comprehensive R tutorial is included, which means that anyone with little or no experience in using R will be quickly brought up to speed in terms of the computing requirements that are needed to get through the material in a very easy to understand manner. For those without much statistical knowledge, an excellent review of the basic statistical techniques includes one- and two-sample hypothesis testing. These techniques are equivalent to those covered in any year II undergraduate statistics curriculum. There is a comprehensive review of the numerous ways of describing data graphically. With Bayesian statistics being so widespread today, the reader also benefits from a review of Bayesian statistical methodology. Introducing packages such as JAGS allows the novice actually to produce some simple Bayesian models. One of the strengths of this book is the seamless integration of statistical software, statistical techniques and real data. Before venturing into analysing real data, the authors crafted a chapter on the types of data sets that are available in hurricane climatology as well as a review of the different data file formats.

The second part of the text covers more advanced statistical techniques, including spatial models, time series models, cluster models, Bayesian models and impact models. It is clear that any statistician wanting to work with climatologists might find this text extremely useful as it provides the bridge to acquire the vocabulary in a very easy-to-use non-threatening way.

The book is pitched at the undergraduate level assuming little or no knowledge of either probability or statistics. Statisticians would truly benefit from this book as it exposes statisticians to virtually all the statistical methods that are currently in use in hurricane climatology. Hurricane climatologists also stand to benefit from a book which reviews relevant statistical methods that are used in the field.

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