Customer Reviews

Biostatistics for the Health Sciences

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I have used other biostatistics texts before, and this is indeed one of the better ones. Generally, the explanations are clear and easy to follow, but not always. Sometimes, the author will go into far too much detail and risks losing all but the most capable students under a mountain of excessive information for an intro textbook.

Other times, the example calculations will not match up with the instructions given. For example, when doing a two-tailed test and testing for significance, you can either double the obtained p-value OR halve the critical p-value. In some cases, the author will explain a given test and discuss halving the critical p-value, but then in example calculations will double the obtained p-value without comment. This is a small example, but this type of thing happens all the time.

The appendices are excellent. For instance, the author provides both "sides" of the area under the normal curve (Z-scores and p-values) for a given half, whereas most authors require you to solve .5-n to get the other part. Again, this sounds minor, but it is a help and a timesaver. I also like how all the equations are set off in boxes, and the author does a fine job of immediately explaining what variables are what.

All in all, I like this book. I wish it left out some amount of what I consider to be excessive detail, and I also wish that all the example calculations were consistent with the instructions given. But otherwise, great book!

I am not good at statistics, but I find this text to be clear, even for me. It has also served well as a reference.

I used this book in a 200 level Biostat course. I liked the biology slant -- all the health science applications. I especially appreciated the thorough explanations and many complete examples -- even the answers to the odd numbered problems in the back of the book are completely worked out (as opposed to just giving the answers).

I am a Ph.D. student in an Educational Research program and I needed an online statistics course to fill a required statistics course. When my dissertation chair reviewed this textbook she gave the course (taken through a different University in a different state) her seal of approval because of how well the text explains concepts.

Over the time I have been interacting with this text I have found it to be thorough, often providing alternative solutions so learners can see the logic behind a solution.

There is a website associated with the book, which offers invaluable resources to go along with the text. The web site is [...]

On the site you can find .sav files as well as PowerPoint presentations, handouts, and more. If you are thinking of using this book, consider checking out the website and available resources.

Now naturally, this is a first edition. As with any textbook, it will improve with further revisions. But for a first edition, I find it first rate.

By accident, I bought the Triola and Triola book by the same title and I like this one better, in case that helps the decision process for you.

I have to confess to being a bit surprised in the fact that I am the only one to, up until this point, write a negative review of this book. I am currently a graduate student in a biostatistics program at Tulane University and I think that my first semester biostats instructor summed up this book best in her stating that "I think it is clear that this book was not written by statisticians."

This book provides a number of misrepresentations of statistics and rarely provides enough information to be useful. If you give any importance to mathematical rigor this is not the book for you (I am a biostats student, not a math student, my threshold for mathematical rigor is relatively low).

If you would like to understand this subject I highly recommend your buying the book by Rosner. Rosner's book IS significantly more difficult than Blair and Taylor, but it also provides the information needed to gain any practical knowledge of the subject matter.

That said, if your hope is to breeze through a biostatistics course as to complete your MPH and you place fairly little importance on the concepts of this class (i.e. if you are taking a biostats course because you HAVE to) this is probably a good text choice.

At the time I purchased the book, I got it for almost half the price off the Amazon price. The book came quickly because the seller was physically close to where I lived in the Metro-Atlanta area. It was in excellent condition.