Geoffrey R. Norman - Biostatistics: The Bare Essentials

BIOSTATISTICS

The Bare Essentials

Fourth Edition

Geoffrey R. Norman, PhD

Professor, Department of Clinical Epidemiology and Biostatistics
McMaster University
Hamilton, Ontario, Canada

David L. Streiner, PhD

Professor, Department of Psychiatry
University of Toronto
Toronto, Ontario, Canada

Professor Emeritus, Department of Clinical Epidemiology and Biostatistics
Professor Emeritus, Department of Psychiatry and Behavioural Neurosciences
McMaster University
Hamilton, Ontario, Canada

Master Woodworker
Halton County Radial Railway Museum
Milton, Ontario, Canada

2014

PEOPLE'S MEDICAL PUBLISHING HOUSEUSA

SHELTON, CONNECTICUT

BIOSTATISTICS

The Bare Essentials

Fourth Editon

Im actually enjoying a stats book! When you said someone was laughing so hard they dropped your textbook in the bath, I was skeptical, but now, I truly understand! I often comment that your text is very funny and people are surprised that I did not mean the phrase as an oxymoron. Thank you for taking this approach to teaching stats!

Le-anh Ngo

I hate stats, loath stats. But, I have just discovered Biostatistics, and just had to say thank you for making me laugh. I have never had things explained so simply and appropriately (this is my third go at stats, as an undergraduate, in my graduate dip, and now my PhD). Keep writing ... you are making a difference to some poor stats students.

Karen Munk

Yes, the marginalia is very popular with faculty and students alike; a colleague and I giggled hysterically over the humorous examples and marginalia (those passing her office thought wed lost our marbles). My favorite is the yuppie patients. Usually statistics books put me to sleep, but Biostatistics is the exception.

Christine Marton

I thought Biostatistics looked interestingand it definitely is! Without it, I dont know if I would ever have made sense of the subject. Im in the midst of writing up my PhD thesis, and its been an invaluable reference andperhaps more miraculousI never read a page without a chuckle. The great mix of humor and statistics are too often thought to be mutually exclusive. Im recommending this book to all my fellow graduate students.

Joe Brown

Biostatistics: The Bare Essentials would have been life-changing had it been published when I was in graduate school in at University of Chicago. It now must settle for being life- enhancing. Statistics doesnt have to be that god-awful boring! And it can be simply described as well. I thought Howard Wainer was clear, but you guys are even better.

Rebecca J. McCauley

I just wanted you to know that you and Dr. Streiner are the only people on the planet who can make me laugh when trying to figure out statistics.

Monica McHenry

The cover depicts the famous Study of Human Proportion in the Manner of Vitruvius by Leonardo da Vinci, drawn about 1490, and done to death 500 years later in 2000. Those with a classical bent may wish to know the origin of the idea. According to Renaissance notions, the Perfect Man was based on geometric principles. The arms outstretched, the top of the head, and the tip of the feet defined a square, and the tips of the arms and legs outstretched in a fanlike position inscribed a circle centered on the navel.

What da Vinci failed to notice is that the legs fit precisely on a normal curve, with the mean between the two heels and the apex at the crotch, one standard deviation falling exactly on the two kneecaps, and the asymptotes at the corners of the inscribed square. The centers of the two feet, at the point where they intersect the arc of the circle, then determine the conventional criterion for statistical significance at two standard deviations from the mean.

Leonardo da Vinci can be forgiven, however. Statistics hadnt been invented yet in 1492.

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Biostatistics 4th edition without SPSS software:

ISBN-13: 978-1-60795-178-0

ISBN-10: 1-60795-178-9

eISBN-13: 978-1-60795-279-4

Biostatistics 4th edition with SPSS software:

ISBN-13: 978-1-60795-190-2

ISBN-10: 1-60795-190-8

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To two people whose hard work, patience, diligence,
and, most important, unflagging good humor,
have made it possible:

Geoff R. Norman

and

David L. Streiner

Too many people confuse being serious with being solemn.

John Cleese

One of the first symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that ones work is terribly important.

Bertrand Russell

Most researchers use statistics the way a drunkard uses a lamppostmore for support than illumination.

Winifred Castle