Customer Reviews

An Introduction to Medical Statistics (Oxford Medical Publications)

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

 

 

This is the second edition of an excellent introductory text for medical students similar to Doug Altman's. Bland covers the basics: designing clinical trials and epidemiological studies, data collection, summarizing data, basic probability, standard errors and confidence intervals along with tests of significance (both parametric and nonparametric). Various types of regression methods are covered and this edition adds Cox proportional hazards models and meta-analysis. Many exercises and examples are taken from Bland's 20 years of experience as a medical statistician. It is noteworthy for dealing with sample size issues in Chapter 18. Mortality statistics and life tables are covered in Chapter 16.

The book is not quite as advanced as Altman's.

Clearly and logically set out starting with the reasons for medical statistics and how studies are designed and moving logically to the methods used. All practicing doctors need to know something about medical statistics. This is a very good place to start. It is written for non-mathematicians but has enough mathematics to justify the information presented and stimulate further interest. It is a relatively short book with clear logical explanations rather than flashy illustrations and computer graphics. Also provides exercises, essential in all mathematical subjects.

While titled an Introduction, this book contains a wealth of detail, strategy, practical examples and generous sharing of the author's experience, including traps for the unwary.

I like the author's direct, self-effacing style and how every topic receives broad coverage.

It is not a HOW TO book, but an education, if you are prepared to absorb all it has to offer.

I am a fourth year pharmacy student and I bought this book hoping that it would help me wrap my head around the statistics and trial designs I was reading about every few weeks for journal club. I needed something that would help me interpret the literature, then apply it to practice. This is very much a statistics book and not quite the perfect "journal club how-to" I was looking for, but I'm still quite glad I have it. There are two chapters that give a nice overview of the types of study designs (cross-over, case-control, etc) and other basic trial concepts like allocation and randomization, sampling, informed consent, and bias. I always got tripped up by some of the most fundamental statistical concepts like power and confidence intervals, and I was never quite sure what I should be taking away from them. Bland gives easy to understand explanations of those types of basics, starting with how they're calculated, what they really mean, and how you should interpret them when you come across them in the literature. He also has one of the best explanations of p values that I've ever read.

I still want to find a guide that goes more into applying trial results to practice, but this is a great place to start if you need help interpreting all of those scary statistics in the medical literature.

It arrived earlier than I thought and the condition was also better than my expectation, so I am very pleased.

Seems a good basic sufficent stand-alone stats book for medical professional (ie non specialised statistician), although admittedly I haven't used many others to compare, covering a comprehensive cross section of the commonly used medical science stats techniques, with excellent basic maths / stats principles that are relatively easy to understand for those with a basic mathematics background (higher secondary school). Possibly too light on for some more complex stat techniques (eg multi-variate analysis - eg no mention of cluster or hierarchial or other specifically indicated analysis etc.) - ie newer edition mayn't have moved sufficiently with the times. Nonetheless a good solid stats background, very readable, and responsible in imploring appropiate use of stats. Very usable reference and / or learning book.

It's an okay text but the author quotes himself a lot. I just wish all the tables and formulas were in a specific location and the symbols for the formulas defined each time a new one was presented.