Biostatistical Methods in Epidemiology

Rating:
Summary: Interesting and difficult book
Review: This was a difficult book for me to read and review and I think it would be tough to write as well. Biostatistics is taught generally devoid of its epidemiological context but this book tries to break a new ground and tries to show use of biostatistics in derivations of epidemiology measures. This makes the book theoritical which is what I was looking for. It succesfully breaks a new ground in some places particularly on on confounding where author summarizes recent literature neatly. However, other chapters require knowledge of Maximum Likelihood (ML) methods which are covered in an intermediate biostatistic texts like Larsen and Marx. This book is interesting because its the only book which I have found which covers the ML methods for odds ratio but this is the only book which covers them. Disappointingly, the author skips derivations and reaches straight to the results which is frustating. Since this is textbook for advanced students and author assumes knowledge of ML methods, eschewing details and derivations is sad.