Customer Reviews

Practical Statistics for Medical Research (Chapman & Hall/CRC Texts in Statistical Science)

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This is a very well written and popular text on biostatistics. Altman writes for non-statisticians but the book is best suited for those with at least one prior course in statistics and those who have had mathematics through high school algebra. Emphasis is placed on the important practical problems. Good statistical designs and analyses are emphasized. The pitfalls with many published medical articles are discussed in Chapter 16.
I used this book to teach a 20 lecture course to students (engineers, clinicians and computer scientists) at Pacesetter in 1998 and at Biosense Webster in 1999 (both medical device companies that employed me as senior biostatistician). It was a good refresher course for the CRAs and engineers and it helped to make it easier for me to work with them on their statistical problems.

I have also taught a similar course to undergraduate students in the Health Science Department at Cal State Long Beach. Altman's book is a little too advanced to use as a text for that course but I did use it as a reference and covered material in Chapter 16 at the end of the course. Clear discussion of the medical literature is very important to these students and Altman does a great job!

This book was the text for the intro to Biostat class at Columbia University this year. It is lucid, well organized, doesn't bog down in details or equations, and gives a good introductory explanation of the basic statistical methods, their rationale for use, and their various assumptions and shortcomings.

I can't imagine trying to do stats without a copy of this book beside me - I'd be lost. If you're in need of a book to help you understand medical statistics as they are presented in the literature, you should use this book and eschew all others.

I have been teaching statistical methods and epidemiology for graduate students in the health area for more than 5 years and this book is a hit. Previously I tried Armitage & Berry and got a lot of resistance from the students. Altman's book is well organized, presents the problems and their solutions in a very intuitive way, and focus on the real problems in the area. Very good for introductory courses. I usually use Kirkwood's Essentials of Medical Statistics in parallel.

The book was an excellent overview of the basic medical statistics you commonly see in the literature. I read most of it before working on a literature review project, and it brought me from having a very poor understanding of basic statistics to being able to understand and perform many stat evaluations on my own (t-test, ANOVA, etc.). It's also very good for defining terms, which by itself cleared up a number of things for me.

Ths is a good support for clinicians who are preparing a clinical trial, a randomized study or more simply a descriptive study on a patient population.

This author stands out in both how understandable he makes statistical concepts and on statistical accuracy (something surprisingly missing in many medical statistics textbooks). There is a particularly good section on pitfalls and benefits of computer software. When more complicated tests are advised (beyond what an intro text can explain), he gives sources for further information. Highly recommended. (The only complaint is that the "new" edition was supposed to come in 2008 or 2010 or 2011...)

Best book ever if you want to understand medical statistics. If you need a fast and easy way to find out whitch method to use for any statistical problem in medical research, this is the book you can't live without.

I sent this book back at once. This is for the mathematically inclined, full of formulas and such. There is very little 'practical' information, except you consider mathemathical formulas practical information. As a person who does not have time to immerse oneself in the subject that way, I would appreciate a different approach eg. 'if your data looks like this, then use test X and not test Y because it gives you better blablabla....". You get the idea.

It is probably a useful text for those who wish to pursue an MPH or major in statistics. 'Practical statistics for medical research' is in fact not for the physician researcher but for the statistician who is usually on board these days.