Biostatistics: The Bare Essentials, Second Edition

Rating:
Summary: A guilty pleasure
Review: Although I have long since graduated to much less easygoing fare, I love this book. When I was a confused and clueless medical student, this was the first text that helped me to come to terms with biostatistical concepts.

If you have a background in psychology or other softer sciences, are facing your first biostatistics class, and find other texts a bit scary or obscure, this is definitely worth a try.

The jokes become annoying and the examples a bit garbled on a second read, but I still love this book because of the clarity of its visuals. I also like and highly recommend the chapters on factor analysis and survival analysis, and usually give this book to new students in our lab.

Rating:
Summary: tempered enthusiasm
Review: I am not as enamored with this book as the other reviewers. Even though the authors tried to simplify statistics, I still found the concepts confusing. The much-praised "humor" I felt was corny and occasionally annoying. I read this book along with a standard statistics textbook, and I didn't feel that it helped to clarify things too much. Perhaps there are no shortcuts to learning statistics.

Rating:
Summary: just get to the point!
Review: I found this book extremely annoying to read. I thought it
would be a good idea to get an easy statistics book that does
not presume too much prior knowledge I quickly found the so
called "humor" to seriously interfere with readability. The
constant attempt to be funny simply becomes the book's major
goal in almost every sentence you read! and I just found this irritating to a degree that the book is rendered useless.

Rating:
Summary: Read this book more than once
Review: I found this book very complete, and an excellent companion to a course. Formulas and concepts are carefully explained in English for non-statisticians. AND it's most enjoyable to read! I recommend it to anybody involved in statistics, as a user, as a student, or as a critic.

Rating:
Summary: Sense of Mombo Jumbo
Review: I have to agree with all the posted reviews. This is the book I turn to for real explanations. Currently suffering through a Masters course in Biostatistics using Altman as the main text. I read it first, then come here to see what I missed. This text will help me pass my final!!

Rating:
Summary: The best biostatistics review ever!
Review: I keep a copy of this book in my office to loan out to students who are reviewing for biostatistics exams, and colleagues who feel the need to brush up on their biostats.

The book definitely does assume some basic knowledge about statistics -- I wouldn't recommend it for someone trying to learn about biostats for the first time. It's really best for someone who already has some kind of formal training in biostatistics, but doesn't want to have to dredge through the heavy textbooks for every question -- I can definitely find the answers to my most common questions in this book much more quickly than I can in my formal textbooks.

For those looking for a less technical introduction to biostatistics that doesn't presume a lot of preexisting knowledge, I'd suggest Modulsky's 'Intuitive Biostatistics'.

Rating:
Summary: Best intro stat book I've found
Review: I took stat 20 years ago, and decided I needed an update, particularly regarding how to calculate sample size: this book was the ticket. A lot about sample size always seemed to me to be smoke-and-mirrors, and WHEN that's so (not always, but sometimes!), Norman and Streiner admit it, saving the learner a lot of frustration. Money well spent.

Rating:
Summary: tempered enthusiasm
Review: Norman explains what could be a very boring set of principles in a very effective way...he uses examples that will make you laugh your bag off. He's a good prof too, takes time to explain the concepts {if you ever have the chance to be in his class}.

Rating:
Summary: just get to the point!
Review: These guys are great! An easy-to-read, enjoyable stats book. Never seen one like it. Although it's titled 'biostatistics', it's for anyone who wants to actually understand what statistics is.

Rating:
Summary: A fun stats book, can you believe it?
Review: These guys are great! An easy-to-read, enjoyable stats book. Never seen one like it. Although it's titled 'biostatistics', it's for anyone who wants to actually understand what statistics is.