Binney and Merrifield, 3.6-3.7

Optional reading:

Trumpler, R.J., & Weaver, H. F. 1953, Statistical Astronomy (Berkeley: University of Calfiornia Press). The standard reference on classical techniques of statistical studies of stellar catalogs.

Holmes, H.  The Secret Life of Dust: From the Cosmos to the Kitchen Counter, the Big Consequences of Little Things. A popular account of cosmic and local dust

Supplementary material:

Yasuda, N., et al. 2001, AJ 122, 1104 - log N-log flux relation for galaxies from SDSS

Fishman, G. J., and Meegan, C. A. 1995, ARAA 33, 415  - log N-log flux relation for gamma-ray bursts

Schmidt, M. 1968, ApJ 151, 393 - the V/V_max method

Lynden-Bell, D. 1971, MNRAS 155, 95 - determining the luminosity function and density distribution from measurements of flux and distance in a flux-limited sample

Oudmaijer, R. D., et al. 1998, MNRAS 294, L41 - Lutz-Kelker bias

For an excellent review of the initial mass function, see Gilmore, G., & Howell, D., eds. 1998, The Stellar Initial Mass Function (San Francisco: Astronomical
Society of the Pacific). In particular look at the lead article by Kennicutt.

A recent comparison of dynamical mass-to-light ratios with those estimated from a universal IMF is given by Cappellari et al. (2005)

Maps of dust absorption:

Schlegel, D. J., Finkbeiner, D. P., & Davis, M. 1998, ApJ 500, 525

Web site for the Schlegel et al.  absorption maps

The bootstrap statistic:

Efron, B. 1982, The jackknife, the bootstrap, and other resampling plans (Philadelphia: SIAM)
Efron, B., and Tibshirani, R. 1991, Science 253, 390
Efron, B. 1983, Scientific American 248, 116
Press, W., et al. 1992, Numerical Recipes, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), Section 15.6