The Royal Statistical SocietyThe Royal Statistical Society
Examinations reading list

We provide reading lists for each of the papers of our professional examinations, to assist candidates preparing for them. In some cases, there is one reading list that covers two papers.

The reading lists provide a choice of books and it is not suggested that you should buy all (or even most) of them. You might for example find that you can easily locate one or two books on a list in an academic library, or even a public library, and perhaps those books would suffice - or at least would give you an indication of other areas that you need to try to cover. Some of the lists are annotated with specific advice about particular books.

It is remarkably difficult to keep these lists up to date. Sometimes, books go out of print. Perhaps more often, new editions come out, and these can sometimes involve a change of authors. (Remember that the old editions, which may continue to be available in libraries, will often still be useful.) Another problem is that publishers change the names of their imprints, and sometimes merge with or are taken over by other publishers. We hope there is enough information here to enable you to locate any book. If necessary, try using catalogue searches for author and title. If you need help, please contact us (email to exams@rss.org.uk).

Please now scroll the page to see the catalogue of examination papers. Each gives a link to a PDF file containing the reading list.


Ordinary Certificate, Papers I and II

Higher Certificate
     Module 1 (Data Collection and Interpretation)
     Module 2 (Probability Models)
     Module 3 (Basic Statistical Methods)
     Module 4 (Linear Models)
     Module 5 (Further Probability and Inference)
     Module 6 (Further Applications of Statistics)
     Module 7 (Time Series and Index Numbers)
     Module 8 (Survey Sampling and Estimation)

Graduate Diploma (new modular version)
    Module 1 (Probability Distributions)
    Module 2 (Statistical Inference)
    Module 3 (Stochastic Processes and Time Series)
    Module 4 (Modelling Experimental Data)
    Module 5 (Topics in Applied Statistics)

Graduate Diploma ("traditional" version)
     Statistical Theory and Methods, Papers I and II
     Applied Statistics, Papers I and II
     Options Paper (please see also the Introductory Notes on the list for Statistical Theory and Methods Papers I and II)
        Option in Statistics for Economics
        Option in Econometrics
        Option in Operational Research
        Option in Medical Statistics
        Option in Biometry
        Option in Statistics for Industry and Quality Improvement