Customer Reviews

An Introduction to Biostatistics

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

 

 

My biostats professor is one of the worst teachers I've ever had, so I basically have to teach myself the material. This book definitely explains the concepts wonderfully and provides a lot of examples to explain them even further. I don't mind studying out of it at all, and I normally hate math textbooks.

My masters degree is in Applied Statistics - I've taught intro stats for several years. I'm using this book in a course I'm taking and I'm fairly disappointed (and I'm only the first chapter in).

The book has frequent incorrect definitions about fundamental concepts. For example, the book defines a random variables are "...characteristics [which] vary in an unpredictable way ..." The whole idea of statistics is that random variables vary in predictable ways - they follow distributions that have probability densities, etc...

Also incorrect, they lump continuous data with interval data when they are two separate ideas. Continuous data has it's 'opposite' with discrete data and interval data is paired with ratio data (the book talks about ordinal and categorical data but completely ignores ratio). Interval data can be continuous or discrete as can ratio data.

I haven't gone through most of the rest of the book but if this early on the book is making these kinds of mistakes, I can only assume the remainder of the book is also of a mediocre nature.

This book fails to label many tables properly. It functions poorly as an instructive text. It is disorganized, counterintuitive, and neglects to adequately define the math notation it uses.

Buying this book online was a great experience. Shipped in top condition within 2 days :). As a college student, I was VERY pleased :).

My Biostatistics professor is worthless. Thus, I and the rest of the class are left to teach ourselves from this text. Sadly, as an introductory book this text falls far short of what is needed. Reading the chapters is not very clarifying. The book neglects to explain certain basic concepts that are employed in resolving each of the statistical tests/methods employed. You are not sure where the critical values come from and have to do detective work to back the rule out of the answer. Not always possible as some solutions are only demonstrated one time and so you simply are left not knowing how to apply the rules for the solution...(i.e. is it right tailed, left tailed, is it 1 - alpha or 1 - alpha/2.) Simply put, the writer assumes that you understand these and many other concepts from the start and so you are left having to figure out what they did to solve it. Next, as with so many texts, some of the solutions do not match the questions. Why is there no solution manual for this book? I need to see how these were solved and have the rules applied described in order to teach myself the correct method of solving! Am I wrong? It does say "Introduction" in th title... That said, I was able to use the solutions provided by a professor to teach myself the methods in the aforementioned circuitous detective manner by solving all the questions in the chapters...