Statistics for the Life Sciences (3rd Edition)

Rating:
Summary: very good stat book
Review: Great examples, great problems, and a great writer sum up this book written by a Purdue Professor. If you deal with statistics and have a career in the health sciences, this is the book for you.

Rating:
Summary: easy introductory to statistics
Review: I recently finished using Samuel's book in a dual level statistics course. As an undergraduate I found the material basic and extremely easy to follow. From the perspective of a student who has never had a formal statistics course, I found this book to be simple. Problems are relevant to the life sciences. I perhaps expected more challenging concepts and problems to have been presented-a bit disappointing.

Rating:
Summary: I DON'T HAVE IT YET
Review: I wish I knew where my book was...

Rating:
Summary: An excellent textbook that teaches by example
Review: In a word - wow. This is an outstanding textbook for undergraduate biology students. The number of practical, real life examples exceeds anything else I have seen in a statistics book, permitting the student to follow theory immediately with concrete practice. Examples are drawn from all axes of biology as well - physiology, biogeochemistry, pharmacology, microbiology, animal behaviour and more. I have been disappointed with previous textbooks which fall down in the following ways: 1) too much emphasis on the mathematics of calculation, or 2) lack of practical introductory treatment of moderately advanced topics which are nonetheless necessary to practitioners. This book for me strikes a very good balance between understanding the underpinnings without getting lost in equations, and getting your hands dirty with data in order to learn by example. Coverage is as wide as necessary today: introduction to logistic regression, and a clear treatment of interaction in two-way ANOVA. I do note that multiple regression is not touched. The sole drawback: sticker shock. It will be difficult for students to pay for a book that costs about $100 US. But at least you get what you pay for in this case.