Product Description

Presents statistical techniques frequently used in medical research in an understandable format for the non-mathematician. Since the third edition, there have been many developments in statistical techniques. The fourth edition aims to provide the medical statistician with an accessible guide to these techniques and to reflect the extent of their usage in medical research.

Uses examples selected almost entirely from medical research projects

Statistical topics presented reflect the frequency of their usage in medical usage

The new edition radically reorganizes the text coppared with previous editions

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #374364 in Books
• Published on: 2001-12-15
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 832 pages

Review
On the fourth edition:

'...this breakthrough revision of a classic...is truly excellent: comprehensive, informative, able to be read at a variety of levels by a variety of readers, modern and insightful.'
Statistics in Medicine, Volume 22, 2003

'...this is a volume which could usefully, and perhaps should, be read from cover to cover by anyone embarking on the study of medical statistics. For those already working in the area, it should at least be on their bookshelves.'
Short Book Reviews, Volume 22, Number 2, August 2002

'...each edition has improved and expanded considerably on the last, keeping pace with the ever-changing field of medical statistics...'
eMJA Bookroom, 2002

On previous editions:

'...this is an excellent book...I strongly recommend this book...'
International Society for Clinical Biostatistics, December 1997

'...this classical beauty has aged well.'
International Statistical Institute, April 1996

'...readers who...use statistical analysis...must buy this third edition'
Australian-New Zealand Journal of Surgery, Spring 1995

'...the standard text for professional medical statisticians.'
Aslib Book Guide, November 1994

From the Back Cover
This popular book is recognised as a standard text for medical researchers and statisticians advising in medicine. Its first edition was reprinted six times. This new edition continues to cover basic principles, techniques of varying complexity, and applied statistical methods, and now contains a new chapter on statistical computation.

Customer Reviews

The bible of biostatistics.
This is definitely one of the most comprehensive of all biostatistics textbooks out there and it is also the best. Authoritative in style, it starts from the very basics and surveys in *detail* almost every method in biostatistics.

You will be impressed: Apart from *all* the basic techniques usually found in most biostatistics texbooks, it has two extensive chapters on Bayesian methods (with Gibbs sampling, MCMC, etc., you name it), extensive treatments of clinical trials, extensive treatments of longitudinal data and GEE models, extensive details on the bootstrap and jackknife, an extensive chapter on methods in epidemiology (risk ratios, Mantel-Haenszel method), extensive treatments of categorical data (contingency tables, logistic regression), and an extensive chapter on survival analysis. This is indeed a very extensive book.

"Statistical Methods in Medical Research" is also a book on methodology, so theorems and proofs are not to be expected. Also there are no exercises, but there are excellent illustrative examples of the various methods. While it is very descriptive, it contains enough mathematics to keep the presentation of concepts *complete*. It is also very up-to-date and has an excellent reference list.

In a nutshell, this is a work of great ambition and vision: it will cater for beginners and masters alike.

Good Primer of Medical Statistical Theory
This edition if the classic text is extensively revised from previous editions. It offers a good background of theoretical considerations in biomedical statistics. It is particularly useful for the non-statistician physician who is involved in clinical trials.

Invaluable resource on all levels
As a principal level Statistician in industry, I have long used Armitage's earlier edition of this text to lend as a resource for non-statistical colleagues, because of its lucid and easily understandable explanations of statistical concepts. However, it has also proved a valuable resource to me personally, because it provided all of the formulas and calculations that I needed to manually recreate analyses; as an example, to calculate overall summary statistics from the summaries of component subgroups. I purchased this new edition for the additional content, such as Bayesian analysis, and have discovered that it still retains all of the advantages of the earlier work.

In short, I find this book to provide the most understandable introduction to statistical concepts, as well as the most useable content, of any such text that I have read. It is invaluable to both the consulting statistician and the practitioner who occasionally has to go 'outside the box' in applying statistical methods.