Customer Reviews

Biostatistics, Student Solutions Manual: A Foundation for Analysis in the Health Sciences (Wiley Series in Probability and Statistics)

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Daniel obviously knows his statistics; but, I wouldnt think that is too helpful for individuals reading or studying from his textbook.
The reasons are numerous, and all these reasons would reduce anyone's chances of solely using this book, or even using it at all.
The textbook is well organized, however Daniel's writing often is pedantic, repetitive (not in the helpful way) and ambiguous at best.
The examples and solutions occassionaly have serious errors in them which affect the overall outcome of the test (A second consideration is that the book is in it's 8th edition!!! therefore such errors are unacceptable for a person such as myself).
An example can be found on page 239 (example 7.3.2). The pooled variance, as calculated by Daniel is approximately off by 100 simply because he didnt give attention to dividing the numerator with the proper pooled D.F of the samples. The chapter ironically was on hypothesis tests, something extremely important to any line of empirically oriented statistics.

In Chapter 8; which is probably the most important chapter in Bistatistics (ANOVAs) he does not mention the relationship between MSW and sample SD. Also, his usage of Summation in formulas often are unnecessarily overcomplicated. Such is not even seen in professional journals.

I did like this textbook regardless of its many shortcomings, its not because I liked the author's style of writing. Its more or less the fact that my lecturer (I assume) used this book heavily in his lectures and so I used it as a supplementary text.

I would suggest, Chap T. Le's Introductory Biostatistics. However he goes too much into nonparametric methods and proportions and doesnt cocentration (to the degree I wanted) on continous data.

More robust and probably cost effect books are :Introductory Statistics for the Life Sciences by Samuels. But the Best book I have ever seen on the subject is "Introductory Biostatistics for the health sciences" By Chernick and Friis. The book is well priced and no portion of this book, I have seen as being useless.

I'm taking my first biostatistics class in medical school, but the text I am using in class (Rosner) has lost me. I subsequently borrowed Daniel's book from the library (only because it has 7th editions), and I am glad that I picked it! Daniel is a good writer. The book is well organized and laid out. Important concepts are emphased and explained with minimum mathematics involved. The well thought out examples are worth working through as well for clarification of the applications of important concepts. However, as a beginner in statistics, I was lost in the midst of mathematics on certain concepts (given that I have a relatively strong mathematics background) without really understanding the meaning of some very basic terms, like percentile, confidence intervals.

What I do is to read another reference book that explains the very basic concepts in plain English first before reading this text. I am currently using Munro's Statistical Methods for Health Care Research. While both of them cover the same set of concepts, Daniel gives me the mathematical and more advanced explainations compare to Munro.

Let's look at chapter 9. You will find the following mistakes. (1) Page 419. Figure 9.4.5 (d) r squared - 1, it should be r squared - 0. (2) Page 417 Formula (9.4.1) "-" should be "+" (3) Page 421 8. Statistical decision. Where did they get 8.25? (4) Page 403 Figure 9.2.1 intercept=0 Normally, it is not 0. Anyway, 0 is not totally wrong.

I hate this book.

Nice biostat book that works as a good reference for people with biostatistical interests. I bought it because I had a biostat course this semester. It's nice, I recommened it.

The title is very appropriate - this text provides a solid foundation in biostats. I used it for an intro course in grad school, and working through the text was very worthwhile. Previously cloudy concepts are now more clear, and I have a great reference for future use. More in-depth biostats deserves a consultation with a statistician, not a longer text. I agree with other reviewers that there are occasional mistakes (which need to be fixed - this is not even the first edition), but overall I would still highly recommend it.

Well, if I still refer to this text after having taken Intro to Biostats almost 3 years ago, then this book can't be all that bad. For the money, however, the publisher could have at least made the book more durable. This book starts to fall apart after only about a month of use- I kid you not!

This book has positives and negatives.

Positives
-Answers given to questions in the accompanying textbook. Yes, I know, that's what it's supposed to do. But the fact is this is the main good thing about the book. I'm taking a Master's level statistics course which includes homework from the book graded for accuracy. There are times when I'm waffling between two possible answers that this book helps me by giving a tiebreaker. Or, revealing that I'd taken the question in an entirely different way than it was intended to be taken.

Negatives
-Only the odd-numbered answers are given. Ok, you know what? I'm not in high school anymore. I'm not copying answers out of a book to turn into a teacher so I can get back to skateboarding sooner. I'm earning an expensive graduate degree and trying to learn the material. Having the answers to questions is helpful in that regard. I bought this book expecting more than just a few of them.
-There are incorrect answers given in some cases. I won't point these out, as other people have already.
-There are times answers are given to the wrong questions. Apparently, when answers were selectively copied and pasted out of the master list, the wrong one would be copied- ie, the answer to #4 would be copied and labeled #5.
-Construction is an issue that I didn't even expect to have to address, but I do. The first time I used the book, I tried to flatten it out a bit so it would stay open. I separated the book from the cover binding almost entirely. After 5 minutes of use or not even.

All in all, I'm sure there will be times I'm glad to have this resource. Indeed, there have already been such times. However, the negatives I listed still exist and seriously curtail how many of those times will happen.

This text does good at literarily simplifying extravagant concepts, yet retains the extrapolation of such concepts to complicated details. Moreover, this book provides more than enough mathematical practice problems to solidify understanding of concepts.

This book is very easy to follow. It gives a description of the subject followed by the formulas and numerous examples. There are many helpful problems that follow the chapter.

I think that Wayne Daniel's book is a fairly comprehensive introductory book in biostatistics. I don't agree with the review who thinks it must be used in a second course rather than a first. Thomas Jefferson University uses it as a first text in biostatistics for their nursing students. I wouldn't mind using it in a first course if I didn't have my own text to use.