Customer Reviews

Introductory Biostatistics for the Health Sciences: Modern Applications Including Bootstrap (Wiley Series in Probability and Statistics)

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Biostatistics textbooks usually either concentrate on the math or the explanations, and end up giving an unbalanced idea of the subject at hand.

Texts that choose to have both as different modules, are generally large (therefore more or less reference), expensive and at times incoherent.

I have come across a variety of texts dealing with the subject, from the popular Motulsky's book, Rosner, Dytham and even most of the Wiley series. I have found that this is one of those very few texts available that has a balanced explanation of stat with "the english of it" and "the maths of it".

In general the book follows the same sequence as standard biostatistics courses offered at second year of university. However it assumes the reader knows very little, at that same token the book is not written in a conderscending manner.

It is so well written that it can probably appeal to most readerships (undergraduate that is). It is not only an excellant primer but also a workable textbook.

The author had some sections with great explanations (like sections on bootstrap) but some chapters were overly simplistic or overly complicated. The mathematical parts were neither simple enough for a non mathematician nor extensive enough for someone with a mathematics background to follow. I think the book would have benefited from discussing less subjects but in more detail. Examples would also have helped. The sections on software omit R, which was probably because this was fairly new when the book was written. Several sections referred to StatXact without even naming the tests.