Product Description

Practical Statistics for Medical Research is a problem-based text for medical researchers, medical students, and others in the medical arena who need to use statistics but have no specialized mathematics background. The author draws on twenty years of experience as a consulting medical statistician to provide clear explanations to key statistical concepts, with a firm emphasis on practical aspects of designing and analyzing medical research. Using real data and including dozens of interesting data sets, this bestselling text gives special attention to the presentation and interpretation of results and the many real problems that arise in medical research.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #294305 in Books
• Published on: 1990-11-22
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 624 pages

From the Back Cover
Most medical researchers, whether clinical or non-clinical, receive some background in statistics as undergraduates. However, it is most often brief, a long time ago, and largely forgotten by the time it is needed. Furthermore, many introductory texts fall short of adequately explaining the underlying concepts of statistics, and often are divorced from the reality of conducting and assessing medical research.

Practical Statistics for Medical Research is a problem-based text for medical researchers, medical students, and others in the medical arena who need to use statistics but have no specialized mathematics background.

The author draws on twenty years of experience as a consulting medical statistician to provide clear explanations to key statistical concepts, with a firm emphasis on practical aspects of designing and analyzing medical research. The text gives special attention to the presentation and interpretation of results and the many real problems that arise in medical research.

Customer Reviews

Another point of view
This book is often recommended to biologists and clinicians undertaking clinical research. Although it does contain pretty much everything you need to know in order to design and analyse a study, it is not the sort of book that is easy to read cover to cover. The language is heavy going and old fashioned.

For complete beginners, I would have to recommend Primer Of Biostatistics by Stanton A Glantz. By using rather zany examples from the planet Mars, the reader does not get bogged down in all the medical terminology, unlike the examples in Altman. And it is a book you can sit down anywhere (on the bus or tube) and continue where you left off.

To summarise: If you are a medical student who needs to pass a test in medical statistics, go for Glantz. If you are starting some research and have no knowledge of medical statistics, go for Glantz. If your budget allows, get Altman for reference (otherwise borrow it from your library, or someone who gave up trying to read it).

Wonderful - practical, easy language, good advice
Altman addressess the questions and difficulties met in every-day practice of medical statistics in a clear, very practical style. Useful by those (eg clinicians) new to statistical analyses, and also to statisticians venturing into an area in which they've not been much before. As a single 'best' book for everyday analyses, this is it!

Excellent
An excellent textbook for non-statisticians undertaking medical research. Only criticims is it is a little thin on multivariate analysis and meta-analysis.