Understanding Biostatistics

About this book

This book looks at the fundamentals of biostatistics, using elementary statistics and explores the nature of statistical tests, the tests that produces the p-values and basic aspects of clinical trials. The concept of distribution functions are discussed, including the Gaussian distribution and its importance in biostatistics. The book also looks at problems of estimating parameters in statistical models and looks at the similarities between different models. The author does not set out to provide the definitive text on biostatistics, but rather to provide a guide to the concepts involved and their application in everyday work.

Contents

Preface

1 Statistics and Medical Science
2 Observational Studies and the Need for Clinical Trials
3 Study Design and the Bias Issue
4 The Anatomy of Statistical Tests
5 Learning About Parameters, and Some Notes on Planning
6 Empirical Distribution Functions
7 Correlation and Regression in Bivariate Distributions
8 How to Compare the Outcome in Two Groups
9 Least Squares, Linear Models and Beyond
10 Analysis of Dose response
11 Hazards and Censored Data
12 From the Log-rank Test to the Cox Proportional Hazards Model
13 Remarks on Some Estimation Methods

Index

Customer Reviews

Biography

Anders Kallen, Department of Biostatistics, AstraZeneca R&D, Sweden.