Must-have statistics

The chance of reviewing the new edition of this classic text came just at the right time, as my first edition copy had finally started to disintegrate. My introduction to medical statistics, or indeed any statistics apart from a brief encounter with experimental error assessment, came with the opportunity to sit in on Peter Armitage’s lectures at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine in 1971. These lectures formed the basis of his book, and since then each edition has improved and expanded considerably on the last, keeping pace with the ever-changing field of medical statistics and adding new co-authors on the way.

The book has been reorganised since the last edition, including, among other changes, new sections on permutation and Monte Carlo methods, non-linear regression and multilevel modelling, and also expanding the sections on Bayesian methods and clinical trials.

This book is about methods and their application and is aimed at the practitioner, but it is also suitable for anyone with an interest in statistics. It could be read as a unified text and could form the basis of a practice-oriented course, but it is most likely to be dipped into as required. The subject index appears extensive and exhaustive. There is also an excellent author index which helps to track down the context of any of the wide-ranging set of references. The authors do not present any mathematical theory; rather, they concentrate on commonsense explanation and justification for the techniques and methods that they describe, and these are accompanied by plenty of worked examples. They also direct readers to appropriate statistical software.

This book belongs on the shelf of anyone who uses or needs to understand anything about medical statistics, and will be constantly on loan from library shelves.

Nicholas H de KlerkTVW Institute for Child Health Research Perth, WA