The first printing of the new book had some production problems. Nothing too serious (corrected pages are here), but Cambridge is making a second printing, which is why it’s currently unavailable on Amazon. The second printing should be arriving in a few weeks.
P.S. The blurbs are all valid, and I still think this would be an ideal textbook for any course in regression or generalized linear models, as well as a great way to learn the stuff on your own.
P.P.S. Some typos (and even mistakes) are inevitable; for example, see here for the errata list for the first printing of the first edition of BDA. It only took us close to 10 years to collect those! For the new book, though, the publishing equivalent of a freak accident occurred: the copy editor and both authors looked carefully at the page proofs, but then a glitch arose after this in a final production stage. Some problem with postscript fonts in some of the graphs. It’s embarrassing but doesn’t have too much effect on the content (and now some lucky few have rare pre-recall first printings!).
That'll teach me for being an early adopter. On the other hand, it's appropriate that the first printing turned out to be a pretty good but still imperfect approximation of the actual book.
The book is, indeed, excellent. Highly recommended! But there are even more misprints that you list on the errata page. Will the nice people from Cambridge be providing we suckers customers who bought too soon with corrected copies? Or is the appropriate lesson to learn that one should never buy a first printing from Cambridge?
Kieran,
Unlike with the Betamax, being an early adopter only cost you $39.99!
David,
Some of the other items on the errata page are misprints; others are minor changes reflecting software updates. Regarding Cambridge: now that this has happened once, I'm sure they'll be more careful with forthcoming books.
Dear Andrew,
Congratulations for the book. However, I am one of the early adopters (I pre-ordered it as soon as I heard about it). I am an (almost) happy owner of the fist printing. So, I would like to know if I can exchange my copy with misprints for a new one.
There are many advantages to owning an otherwise good book that is full of typos and outright omissions. Here is the biggest one:
You can point out errors to Andrew and he will put your names into the preface of the second edition, making you famous for eternity. Consider how much work it is to become famous by the usual channels available to academia and you will go right back to reading the book, looking for new typos. At least, that's what I'm doing.
(Translation for nerdy, overly literal types: this was meant to be a joke.)
One of my former post-docs (a biologist, who joined me for a few months to become indoctrinated in the One True Way of Bayesianism) got a copy of the book, and described it to me as the best stats book he had read.
Bob
February 3, 2007Cambridge is making a second printing, which is why it's currently unavailable on Amazon. The second printing should be arriving in a few weeks.
It's still not available through Amazon — is there a problem with the second printing?
–John
John,
Thanks for asking. There were problems with fonts in pdf. The publisher says they're shipping books to Amazon tomorrow.