Book Description

Discrete or count data arise in experiments where the outcomes are countable and classified into unique, non-overlapping categories. This graduate-level textbook describes the statistical models for evaluating such data. ... Read more

Reviews (3)

A classic
This book must be a part of your library. I've read it several times, and highly recommend it.

A useful synthesis of standard advanced methods
The only review for this book is apparently by the author himself who says it's a great book. As he might be slightly biased in favor of his own writings a dissonant view is called for. Actually, he's right: this is an excellent book that brings together -- and explains as clearly as can do -- how to analyze statistically situations with discrete outcomes, determined by a large number of factors and where the interaction between those factors is potentially non-linear. A must-read for people who know how to run these methods on data in SAS but have no clue about the rationale behind them.

a great book
This is a really good book. I have read it several times.

DZ ... Read more

Book Description

Through a combination of descriptive text and exercises, this book presents an accessible framework for the planning and critical evaluation of epidemiologic studies. It describes the principal sources of error, their impact on the results, and the research strategies used to prevent errors. These strategies are the building blocks of epidemiologic study design which generally seek to obtain accurate results despite the employment of limited resources. The volume is illustrated with examples and exercises from studies published in international journals. It starts with an introduction of basic concepts, followed by a discussion of the basics of selecting the study population and follow-up period, asking the right questions, obtaining information on exposures, and analyzing disease occurrence. Separate treatment is given to strategies specific to case-control or experimental studies. Each step in the planning or critical evaluation of a study is illustrated by exercises covering a wide range of exposures--dietary factors, tobacco, alcohol, drugs, radiation and occupational hazards among others--and diseases such as cancer, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and psychiatric disorders. The book concludes with an overall review of the different aspects of study design and a set of answers to the exercises. The text will equip students with a clear and thorough understanding of the design and accuracy of epidemiologic studies. ... Read more

Reviews (1)

Epidemiology in easy step
Audience: This book is suitable for discussion of epidemiological principles or critical evaluation for students and participants at any level of epidemiology expertise, whether beginning or advanced, as led by an experienced instructor. The result will be a development of epidemiological judgment and intuition, rather than of achieving skill in completing more technical problems. Features: The book has been produced in an attractive, easy-to-use format. The problems are based on published research, and the references are included with the answers, providing further opportunities for teaching. This is a very useful book, and I am looking forward to using it for teaching and discussion groups. The first chapter israther overambitious in attempting to present too detailed a description of epidemiological methodology in 40 pages. In places, a better use of the English idiom would have made this chapter easier to read. However, this does not detract from the main aim of this book, which is that of providing problems for discussion. I recommend the book highly for this purpose. The bulk of this book consists of seven chapters with epidemiological problems for discussion in a group setting. Six of these chapters start with a short introduction to epidemiological methodology followed by 30 short problems and 10 general questions. Another chapter contains longer problems also suitable for group discussion. The first chapter of the book provides a concise, quite detailed summary of epidemiological methods, and the last chapter has more than 100 pages of answers to all the problems listed earlier. The author found that there was a gap between epidemiological principles presented in textbooks and their application in the planning and critical evaluation of epidemiological studies. In this book, the author successfully provides the means to bridge this gap through class discussions. ... Read more

Book Description

First published in 1986, this unique reference to clinical experimentation remains just as relevant today. Focusing on the principles of design and analysis of studies on human subjects, this book utilizes and integrates both modern and classical designs. Coverage is limited to experimental comparisons of treatments, or in other words, clinical studies in which treatments are assigned to subjects at random. ... Read more

Reviews (3)

now a classic and still a great reference
This book was first published in 1986. As Fleiss states in his preface, the intention is to fill a gap in the standard texts on experimental designs by emphasizing and illustrating those that are useful in clinical studies. This book was clearly marketed for the rapidly growing and highly regulated pharmaceutical industry. In addition to the classic experimental designs, Fleiss covers cross-over designs and repeated measure designs that are important in clinical trials. He writes clearly and deals with the important issues in clinical trials including potential biases, blinding, randomized controls, multiple comparisons and repeated measures. The book starts off with a chapter that emphasizes the effect of measurement error and also provides some simple experiments on reliability of measurements.

There is a wealth of methods included, many different designs and various parametric and nonparametric analysis techniques. It is aimed at biostatisticians in the pharmaceutical industry and the medical research field. The book is very much suited for an advanced undergraduate or graduate level course for students majoring in statistics or biostatistics. The level of mathematics is high but not excessively used. Mathematical results on sample size determination are deferred to an appendix.

The Wiley editors choose only successful books to be included in their Classics Library series. The intent of the Classics series is to take popular books by distinguished authors and create a paperback edition that may be more affordable than the hardcovered edition still in print. It is not a revision of the book. This book entered the Classics series in 1999.

It is a great reference source and I plan to consult it a great deal in the future. The only drawback to it that I see is that it is not up to date. The last 15 years has seen many advances in group sequential methods, Bayesian designs and longitudinal data analysis that this text misses. So Fleiss' book is not one stop shopping for a clinical biostatistician but it does offer a lot and presents it eloquently.

With regard to reviewer Izadi's comments on Amazon, I think the appropriate way to ask this question is really to write the author. Since it is here in print for the readers, I will attempt a reply. I think there is a misinterpretation of the terminology. When Fleiss refers to mean logarithms he is not referring to the population means on the log scale but rather the logarithm of the population mean on the original scale. With the latter interpretation equation 3.25 makes perfect sense. It is the former interpretation of the parameters that the reviewers point addresses. The importance in the example is to demonstrate the lack of robustness of t or F tests to non-normal (e.g. lognormal) data and to show that tests and confidence intervals can still be accomplished using the normal theory after the transformation. The key point is that it is the ratio of the parameters that is transformed into differences of the log of the parameters.

A must for biostatisticians
This is the standard text on this subject. Recommend you have at least a Master's degree in statistics to take full advantage of this book. This book is too technical for non-statisticians, although they may get some useful infomation from the non-statistical discussions.

A question from the autour
Dear Sirs I do not know if I can use this part as a tool for contacting the autour or not; however please excuse me if I have not used it properly: I am a student of epidemiology, and presently we are studying the following book: The Design and Analysis of Clinical Experiments; Joseph L. Fleiss; John Wiley & Sons; 1986. But on page 67 it seems that there is some misunderstandings: When we do a log transformation, in fact we are changing (or shifting) the previous distribution to a normal distribution. Without any doubts in this transformation the means of our previous distributions do not transfer to the means of the new distributions! In fact these are the medians of the previous distributions which are transferred to the place of the means of new distributions (of course if we presume that the new distributions are almost perfectly normal) and by finding the confidence interval of the difference of the means of new distributions (lambda1 - lambda2) we are finding the CI of ratio Median1/Median2. In this way it seems reasonable that the formula 3.25 be changed to Median1/ Median2. It would be very kind of you if you help me in this problem!

With best regards Dr. Shahrokh Izadi ... Read more

Book Description

Generations of biologists have relied on this useful book, which presents the basic concepts of statistics lucidly and convincingly. It recognizes that students must be aware of when to use standard techniques and how to apply the results they obtain. Because many biologists do not have a strong mathematical background, the arguments are gauged in terms that can be easily understood by those with only an elementary knowledge of algebra. Mathematical derivations are avoided and formulae are only used as a convenient shorthand. Although the subject is presented with great simplicity, the coverage is wide and will satisfy the needs of those working in many disciplines. New material for this third edition includes consideration of pocket electronic calculators and a special chapter devoted to a discussion of problems associated with numerical calculation, electronic calculators, and computers. ... Read more

Reviews (1)

A very good, basic "statistics cook book"
If all you want is an easy, straight forward "how do I?" book, then this is about the best around. It's basic, but clear and SHORT (no wading through page after page to find the answer). ... Read more

Book Description

Risk stratification is a statistical process by which quality of care can be assessed independently of patient case mix. The evaluation of risk-adjusted patient outcome has become an important part of managed care contracting in some markets, and risk-adjusted outcome rates for hospitals are being reported more frequently in the popular press and on the Internet. This book, written by a statistician and two surgeons for a clinical audience, is a practical guide to the process of risk stratification and does not require or assume an extensive mathematical background. It describes the rationale and assumptions for risk stratification, and provides information on evaluating the quality of various published risk-stratification studies. Numerous practical examples using real clinical data help to illustrate risk stratification in health care. The volume also serves as a step-by-step guide to the production and dissemination of risk-adjusted outcome results for local programs. ... Read more

Book Description

Chin Long Chiang is Professor in the Graduate School, University of California, Berkeley. He was a visiting professor at Harvard, Yale, Emory, Pittsburgh, North Carolina, Michigan, Minnesota, Vanderbilt, Texas, Washington at Seattle, Peking University, and University of London. Professor Chiang has served as a consultant to the WHO, the NIH, and other agencies. He is a fellow of the IMS, the ASA, and the RSS of London. He has published five books, three of them have been translated into Chinese and one into Japanese.

This textbook systematically presents fundamental methods of statistical analysis: from probability and statistical distributions, through basic concepts of statistical inference, to a collection of methods of analysis useful for scientific research. It is rich in tables, diagrams, and examples, in addition to theoretical justification of the methods of analysis introduced. Each chapter has a section entitled "Exercises and Problems" to accompany the text. There are altogether about 300 exercises and problems, answers to the selected problems are given. A section entitled "Proof of the Results in This Chapter" in each chapter provides interested readers with material for further study. ... Read more

Book Description

Information and communication technologies now affect most aspects of healthcare. The Guide presents an easy-to-read overview of the subject, and explains basic concepts in a non-technical manner. Throughout the text, there is a strong emphasis on the principled application of technologies and understanding when such applications are, and are not, appropriate. It also covers the emerging roles of the Internet and Telemedicine, and integrates them into the overall informatics framework. The Guide is written for the general medical reader, and assumes little or no familiarity with informatics or technology. It will also be useful for medical students, as well as allied healthcare workers, medical information specialists and research scientists. ... Read more

Reviews (3)

A Great Place to Start in Medical Informatics
This book is a good place to start if you're unsure of medical informatics and need some direction. It's helpful to get the book, read it, and then go to the references for further information on the topics that interest you.

I found the book surprisingly readable - the authors style makes it easy to read chapter after chapter with relative ease, far more so than other medical informatics books available. It's not an exhaustive book by any means, but I couldn't recommend a better place to test the water, and see if there's anything in Medical Informatics that grabs you.

Superb introduction and overview
This is the finest overview of medical informatics in print. Most such texts discuss the issues within informatics and approaches toward their solution. Coiera provides a cogent discussion of why the issues arise, how they interact with each other, and what they mean for clinicians and informaticians. The author's thought and language are remarkably clear and engaging. The discussion is set squarely in the context of healthcare (although more concrete clinical examples would aid clinicians who come to the book at the beginning of their work in informatics). It is informed by a deep understanding of research in medical informatics and computing. The book is an excellent introduction to the subject for clinicians, and I know very few informaticians whose understanding of the field and the specific problems within it would not be deepened and enriched by reading it.

A good overview of medical informatics
This book provides a good overview of medical informatics. The concepts are introduced in a logical fashion, so that the chapters build on one another. I would recommend it to others as an introductory text. I wished for greater detail in some of the chapters (such as the ones on coding). I also found some of his explanations of models confusing/overly complicated. The chapter on the internet I found least helpful, perhaps because it provided little new information for me. The last section, on intelligent clinical decision support, was very sketchy, and the different approaches not well explained. This was especially true of the chapter on intelligent systems. On the minor complaint side, I found the lack of clear paragraph distinctions irritating, and some of the figures added nothing to the text and could have been left out.

Overall, it is a reasonable, readable, introduction to a broad subject. ... Read more

Book Description

This textbook takes a unique approach to explaining and demonstrating how to use and interpret statistics for the physiological, medical, and life sciences. The first third of the book presents an integrated overview and introduction to experimental design and statistical inference. The rest of the book provides an extensively cross-referenced set of 100 brief critiques of sample case studies embodying all the most common statistical errors or design problems found in the biological literature. These specific cases are effective for teaching the principles of biostatistics. The examples are drawn primarily from biomedicine, yet the book is also valuable to psychologists, social scientists, environmental scientists, ecologists, and any discipline employing statistics. ... Read more

Reviews (1)

An excellent way to learn biostatistics
What makes this book stand out from other books on biostatistics is the 100 summarized and briefly critiqued experiments in the second half of the book. I found that critiquing the experiments and comparing to the author's critique dragged me kicking and screaming to a better understanding of statistics in biological experiments. The book has trained me to quickly review other experiments well. ... Read more

Book Description

Clinical Trials in Oncology emphasizes the importance of proper study design and data management, and explains why communication and partnership between statisticians and clinicians are vital to the conduct of a successful clinical trial.Clinicians face considerable risks-subtle and ever present-when designing trials and interpreting data. This book deals with all aspects of successful trials in a manner accessible to clinicians. Topics addressed include advantages and disadvantages of multi-arm trials; pitfalls to avoid, such as analyzing survival by response or by dose; and how and whether meta-analyses are justified. ... Read more

Reviews (1)

Knowing What Works in Health Care
I should begin by admitting that I had the opportunity to review this little masterpiece in manuscript. Good then, it's even better now.

It's good because it informs the reader, in sober prose, how to determine what works and what doesn't in medical practice, and what's safe and what isn't. It's good because it reveals what can go wrong when anecdotes ("it worked for me!") substitute for sound research as the basis for clinical practice. And it's good because it shows how serious are the consequences of even subtle failures to observe protocols in designing and carrying out clinical trials.

It is reassuring to read of the care and precautions advocated for government-sponsored research; it is accordingly unsettling to contemplate the pressure that commercial interests (drug companies, for-profit hospitals, equipment manufacturers) might bring on researchers to cut a few corners.

After reading "Clinical Trials" I came to appreciate that case studies, longitudinal studies, and retrospective questionnaires, so frequently hyped in the press and on television, are no substitute for actual well-designed and well-executed experiments. Because you and I are different, certainly genetically and probably in other essential ways, what helps you may well harm me. Only the proper application of statistics in designing clinical trials and in analyzing data from them can distinguish what's generally valuable from what's useless (however plausible and authoritatively touted it may be). Although the authors had the good taste to reject the aphorism, usually attributed to a nameless statistician, that "if experimentation be the queen of science, then statistics stands as the guardian of the royal virtue", its pithiness may give the reader the crucial insight into why alternative modes of research are untrustworthy.

Some readers may feel disheartened to learn the truth that many, probably most, promising therapies prove, when adequately tested, worthless, and some may feel in some fuzzy way that to accept this reality is cruelly to deny hope to those who need it badly. On the contrary, this book makes it clear that to offer false hope is the ultimate cruelty, for without experimentation there can be no knowledge, and without knowledge there can be no real hope.

Notwithstanding the slightly technical nature of this book (yes, there IS a chapter with mathematics), I recommend it highly for the general reader who is interested in such topics as personal health care, alternative medicine, managed care cost containment, and the like. Buy a copy for yourself, and, if you feel philanthropic, you might consider donating a copy to your health care provider. The world would be better if doctors' waiting rooms (like hotel rooms with their Gideon Bibles) all had a copy of "Clinical Trials in Oncology" available for patients' perusal. ... Read more

Book Description

ActivEpi is a complete multimedia presentation on CD-ROM of the material commonly found in an introductory epidemiology course. It mixes a full array of media to motivate, explain, visualize and apply epidemiologic concepts. It uses: •Video to instill real-world motivation for learning and applying epidemiologic concepts •Narrated expositions to teach the concepts using high-quality audio synchronized with text, pictures and animations •Quizzes to provide self-evaluation of basic terms and concepts •Data Desk to provide practice applying the methods learned to real data

•Navigational tools such as a dynamic table ofcontents, index and glossary, to allow easy-to-use methods for working through the content •Web links to augment the material on the CD with complementary content authored by others

ActivEpi includes 15 lessons and over 50 hours of content via more than 250 launchable activities and homework exercises. It can be used in a variety of teaching formats: distance learning, self-paced learning, on-campus courses, and short courses.For technical assistance, contact Data Description at support@datadesk.com ... Read more

Reviews (1)

Great resource!
This is a great resource for learning and teaching introductory epidemiology. The first electronic text in the field of epidemiology! I hope the authors bring out a similar text for advanced epidemiology. ... Read more

Book Description

Remaining on the cutting-edge of this rapidly evolving field, this unequaled resource has expanded more than 70% of its original entries to review ammendments to regulatory requirements and recently developed statistical methods impacting the drug review/approval process and biopharmaceutical research and development.Alerts specialists to current standards and best practices in clinical, laboratory, manufacturing, and statistical design, investigation, and analysis. ... Read more

Reviews (1)

provides articles on statistical terms used in drug studies
Chow has done an excellent job of collecting articles from the leading researchers in the pharmaceutical and biologics industry including FDA employees. The terms are specialized but important to those industries. The articles are scholarly and informative. The quality is similar to those in the Encyclopedia of Statistical Science. Most of the terms are also of interest to statisticians like myself who work in the medical device industry. A sample of the items are "Adjustment for Covariates", "Bayesian Statistics", "Boassay", "Clinical Trials", "Equivalence Trials", "Food and Drug Administration", "Intention-to-Treat Analyses", "International Conference on Harmonization", "Multiple Comparisons", "Postmarketing Surveillance", "Sample Size Determination", and "Surrogate Endpoint".

This is a particularly good reference for statisticians who work on clinical trials regulated by the FDA. However keep in mind that it is very specialized and is rather expensive. ... Read more

Book Description

Human Genetics concerns the study of genetic forces in man. By studying our genetic make-up we are able to understand more about our heritage and evolution. Some of the original, and most significant research in genetics centred around the study of the genetics of complex diseases - genetic epidemiology.

This is the third in a highly successful series of books based on articles from the Encyclopedia of Biostatistics. This volume will be a timely and comprehensive reference, for a subject that has seen a recent explosion of interest following the completion of the first draft of the Human Genome Mapping Project. The editors have updated the articles from the Human Genetics section of the EoB, have adpated other articles to give them a genetic feel, and have included a number of newly commissioned articles to ensure the work is comprehensive and provides a self-contained reference.

... Read more

Book Description

* A "first book" on how to access the vast and expanding array of medical information now available and how to critically evaluate it ... Read more

Reviews (1)

Helpful Gem
This is a gem of a book . It will be most helpful to those people who want to be an active participant in the healthcare decisions being made for them or for someone who they are close to and who needs an advocate. It does this by explaining, in layman's terms, how medical professionals arrive at conclusions about diagnoses and treatment. The book can be unsettling because it shows how much uncertainty is associated with medicine. But it will help anyone begin to understand the medical treatment they or a loved one might be undergoing. It does this not by being a medical textbook about diseases, though it contains many medical examples; instead it is a guide that helps the reader to ask questions and search for further information about what doctors say.

I was recently diagnosed with a medical problem. The book has helped me to think more actively about my treatment and to help me ask my doctor questions that I might not have thought about. Doctors are of ten not the all-knowing professionals you want them to be. In fact they should read this book as well.

The best way I can describe the contents of the book is to quote from the Preface, "This book sets the stage for understanding medical information in Chapters 1 and 2 .... Chapter 3 provides an overview of the types of medical research [and] the role of statistics in evaluating studies .... Chapters 4, 5, and 6 comprise a central core of knowledge about the high - as well as lower-tech processes by which we make diagnoses of individual patients, assess the health of populations, make decisions about treatments under conditions of uncertainty, and attempt to provide the best prognostic judgments possible given the great complexity and diversity among patients. The final sections of the book, Chapters 7 and 8, provide conceptual as well as practical guidelines for assessing the quality of medical information available on the Internet, explain the ways in which Internet resources might best be used to capture good information, and confront the current realities of what can and cannot be expected from "artificial intelligence."

Don't be put off by the statistical tables and terminology. They are explained remarkably well. You will learn how necessary statistics are to medicine without having to be a math whiz. I was amazed how the book made it easy to understand complex ideas in science, medicine and statistics. Reading this book is also a small intellectual adventure about how the science of medicine has evolved. The chapter on the Internet helps to grapple with the mass of information that can swamp you.

Each chapter is followed by a summary with suggested references. What I particularly liked was the short blurbs accompanying the references, making it easier to decide what might be worth further investigation. ... Read more

Book Description

This practical reference/text offers a comprehensive, unified presentation of statistical designs and methods of analysis for all stages of pharmaceutical development;emphasizing biopharmaceutical applications and demonstrating statistical techniques with real-world examples. ... Read more