Medical Statistics from Scratch

Correctly understanding and using medical statistics is a key skill for all medical students and health professionals.

In an informal and friendly style, Medical Statistics from Scratch provides a practical foundation for everyone whose first interest is probably not medical statistics. Keeping the level of mathematics to a minimum, it clearly illustrates statistical concepts and practice with numerous real-world examples and cases drawn from current medical literature.

Medical Statistics from Scratch is an ideal learning partner for all medical students and health professionals needing an accessible introduction, or a friendly refresher, to the fundamentals of medical statistics.

Autorentext

DAVID BOWERS, Leeds Institute of Health Sciences, School of Medicine, University of Leeds, Leeds, UK

Klappentext
FOURTH EDITION Medical Statistics from Scratch An Introduction for Health Professionals Medical Statistics from Scratch is the ideal learning partner for all medical students and health professionals needing an accessible introduction, or a friendly refresher, to the fundamentals of medical statistics. This new fourth edition has been completely revised, the examples from current research updated and new material added. Praise for previous editions "I love this book. It lays out the problem of how to approach statistics in a digestible, understandable, and rather complete way. The book actually follows my biostatistics class very nicely even though the class is using a different and more difficult text. I wish I was in class with the writer of this book. He is really a great teacher. This is now one of my favorite books, and I carry it with me all the time." "After years of trying and failing, this is the only book on medical statistics that I have managed to read and understand. I would certainly recommend this to anyone, especially medical professionals who need to have a good grasp of statistics in order to take up postgraduate exams or to understand peer-reviewed publications. I especially found the exercise quite useful. I only wish I had come across this book earlier." "I though this was an outstanding book. It is organised in a way that logically walks you through the rationale behind picking the appropriate statistical tool for your type of data. It is comprehensive in covering the different situations you'll encounter whether you're designing your own study or reading someone else's. The mathematics are presented in an easy-to-understand format striking just the right balance of providing the important concepts without getting bogged down in minute details. It utilises practical examples and references from the medical literature that you'll be comfortable applying day one to that journal lying on your desk. Whether you're starting out as a student or have been in practice for years and want a refresher, this text should be on your shelf." "This book will help the average healthcare worker understand the essentials of statistics to prepare for a board or be involved in medical research. It is a great vantage point to understand the concept and go from there." "Starts with very basic information and lays the information out clearly in a logical sequence that builds up at an easy pace. Plenty of practice exercises to help cement the concepts taught." "Medical Statistics from Scratch is an excellent introduction which I frequently recommend to students and colleagues with little or no knowledge of statistics!" "My work involves much analysis and evaluation of medical studies. This book helps me, a "non-scientist" make certain that my lack of statistical training does not lead me astray. I found this very helpful." "I used this book while I was doing a medical statistic module for my degree. I was new to statistics and found this book a very good introduction for a complete beginner. The language is very simple, chatty, and easy to understand. There are worked example and questions and answers. It covers the basics of statistics first like standard deviations, averages etc. and then progresses onto the medical statistics such as log-rank test, survival curves etc." "I've been wanting to improve my ability to critically read articles from the medical literature and have found your book to be the perfect tool for that purpose. It's easy to read, understandable, and concise. What has been most valuable to me is how well you explain the concepts and rationale behind a method rather than just the mechanics of the method itself. Thank you for a job well done."

Inhalt
Preface to the 4th Edition xix

Preface to the 3rd Edition xxi

Preface to the 2nd Edition xxiii

Preface to the 1st Edition xxv

Introduction xxvii

I Some Fundamental Stuff 1

1 First things first the nature of data 3

Variables and data 3

Where are we going ? 5

The good, the bad, and the ugly types of variables 5

Categorical data 6

Nominal categorical data 6

Ordinal categorical data 7

Metric data 8

Discrete metric data 8

Continuous metric data 9

How can I tell what type of variable I am dealing with? 10

The baseline table 11

II Descriptive Statistics 15

2 Describing data with tables 17

Descriptive statistics. What can we do with raw data? 18

Frequency tables nominal data 18

The frequency distribution 19

Relative frequency 20

Frequency tables ordinal data 20

Frequency tables metric data 22

Frequency tables with discrete metric data 22

Cumulative frequency 24

Frequency tables with continuous metric data grouping the raw data 25

Openended groups 27

Crosstabulation contingency tables 28

Ranking data 30

3 Every picture tells a story describing data with charts 31

Picture it! 32

Charting nominal and ordinal data 32

The pie chart 32

The simple bar chart 34

The clustered bar chart 35

The stacked bar chart 37

Charting discrete metric data 39

Charting continuous metric data 39

The histogram 39

The box (and whisker) plot 42

Charting cumulative data 44

The cumulative frequency curve with discrete metric data 44

The cumulative frequency curve with continuous metric data 44

Charting timebased data the time series chart 47

The scatterplot 48

The bubbleplot 49

4 Describing data from its shape 51

The shape of things to come 51

Skewness and kurtosis as measures of shape 52

Kurtosis 55

Symmetric or moundshaped distributions 56

Normalness the Normal distribution 56

Bimodal distributions 58

Determining skew from a box plot 59

5 Measures of location Numbers R us 62

Numbers, percentages, and proportions 62

Preamble 63

N umbers, percentages, and proportions 64

Handling percentages for those of us who might need a reminder 65

Summary measures of location 67

The mode 68

The median 69

The mean 70

Percentiles 71

Calculating a percentile value 72

What is the most appropriate measure of location? 73

6 Measures of spread Numbers R us (again) 75

Preamble 76

The range 76

The interquartile range (IQR) 76

Estimating the median and interquartile range from the cumulative frequency curve 77

The boxplot (also known as the box and whisker plot) 79

Standard deviation 82

Standard deviation and the Normal distribution 84

Testing for Normality 86

Using SPSS 86

Using Minitab 87

Transforming data 88

7 Incidence, prevalence, and standardisation 92

Preamble 93

The incidence rate and the incidence rate ratio (IRR) 93

The incidence rate ratio 94

Prevalence 94

A couple of difficulties with measuring incidence and prevalence 97

Some other useful rates 97

Crude mortality rate 97

Case fatality rate 98

Crude maternal mortality rate 99

Crude birth rate 99

Attack rate 99

Agespecific mortality rate 99 S...