Reddit reviews Introduction to Computation and Programming Using Python: With Application to Understanding Data (The MIT Press)

If you want to know what programming is like, try Stanford's CS101 course. It's very basic but gives you a taste of what you can learn. You can breeze through it in a week or two. Don't worry about memorizing the code, just focus on the concepts.

If you finish that and enjoyed it, you can try M.I.T's 6.00 1 course. It teaches you Python, one of the easier programming languages to start with. This course is longer than the first one and is an actual programming course. It recommends the book Introduction to Computation and Programming Using Python if you need it.

After that, I would say give Harvard's CS50 online course a go. This course teaches you the C language and is easier to complete if you did the first two courses. This course recommends the books: The C programming language book or C programming: an absolute beginners guide for a more beginner friendly (and budget friendly) option.

Good luck and have fun

its much more recent
it uses python 3.5 and this updated book
https://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Computation-Programming-Using-Python/dp/0262529629

Course - MIT Intro to ComSci. Book

I've been using this book
as an intro to learn some Python and a nice mix of CS concepts and a bit of stats. It's the Python 3 version of the book that grew out of this online MIT course.

I'd say its approachable to both CS and python beginners, but if you're entirely new to coding it may move a little fast. But this is great next step after something like Codecademy's or DataCamp's Python courses.

https://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Computation-Programming-Using-Python/dp/0262529629/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1521858027&sr=1-1

I really enjoyed Introduction to Computation and Programming Using Python. This is what helped me take the next step I was struggling to make with other material. This book actually supplements the lecture series for this class at MIT. They have an online version of this on EDX, but I liked the lecture series from MIT OCW better.

I'm still a student, so take my advice with a grain of salt. I would recommend that you learn the mathematics of statistics. Topics like calculus, matrix algebra, probability, etc. I recommend Mathematics for Machine Learning: https://mml-book.github.io/book/mml-book.pdf

As for programming, I recommend Python (but you should use whatever language you want). If you're willing to break into Python, I recommend the book Introduction to Computation and Programming Using Python: With Application to Understanding Data

When starting out learning calculus, linear algebra, etc. you don't necessary need to work out these problems by hand. You can instead use computer algebra. Sympy is a great CAS; here is a tutorial: https://peerj.com/articles/cs-103/

Good luck with learning stats :D

This was the text book for their MOOC introduction to computer programming course. Published late (too late for fall semester maybe?) 2016, the first time they updated for Python 3. https://www.amazon.co.uk/Introduction-Computation-Programming-Using-Python/dp/0262529629. Maybe on campus they were more timely though, I can’t say.