3 comments about Epidemiology in Medicine.

1. One should not be afraid regarding the edition (1987). It is still a powerfull tool for any student on epidemiology or biostatistics. Despite being not a huge book, it is comprehensive enough for students of any level and perhaps as a companion to established professionals. You can read it page by page as a novel or search it for details in the planing and execution of an epidemiological research. The author is well known for his work on important trials in medicine and that makes him an expert on both theorethical and on a practical basis.



2. Although having graduated some time ago I just keep returning to this well written and crystal-clear undergraduate book on basic epidemiology. This explains clearly also the most basic and important statistical approaches in analyzing data, although leaving multivariate analyses mostly out. However, that might be considered as a virtue as well beacuse the book stays at a very simple level and thus not scare you off it.



3. This book is a clear, concise introduction to the use of epidemiology in medicine. It incorporates modern ideas in epidemiological thinking, providing an overview that is up-to-date and thorough. It delivers a lot of information without being dry, and is engrossing enough to read straight through instead of being another textbook to thumb through.

2 comments about Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity (Published in association with Theory, Culture & Society).

1. The Book consists of two interrelated theses. one reflexive modernization and other issue of risk. The concept of risk is directly bound to the concept of reflexive modernization.It shows how classical modernization is different from reflexive modernization. Risk may be defined as a systematic way of dealing with hazards and insecurities induced and introduced by modernization itself.The risk and hazards of today is of global nature of their threat to people,animals and plants .It results in global industrial pollution,contamination of air,water,foodstuffs etc. and also sickness ,death of plants, animals and people. Another dimension of risk is social transformation with modernity.There is a process of individualization deprive class distints but inequalities by no means disappear.There is a shift from the system of standardised full employment to the system of flexible and pluralised under employment.Risk of scientific development increases disproportionately faster than solution. With the globalisation of industrial society political system looses its function as modernization, technoeconomic system changes the realms of social life and on other hand political systens pre-supposes condition of the system.



2. Ulrich Beck argues that industrial society that used to be known as the distribution of goods has now been moved toward distributions of risk and hazard named as risk society. In other words in the advanced modern world, the social production of wealth systematically goes hand in hand with social production of risks. Accordingly, the problems and conflicts of distribution in a society of shortages are over layered by problems and conflicts that arise from over-production, definition and distribution of scientifically and technologically produced risks, says Beck. Then He argues that science has changed from an activity in the service of truth to an activity without truth. Likewise the consequences of this reflexive modernization contain a tendency toward globalization and ignore the boundaries of nation states which lastly results in continuous global endangerment.
   
   The book also describes the way that the general forms of social life has moved from traditional societies in the mid 18th century to early modernity in 20th century and lastly toward reflexive modernity in the late 20th century which individualism is widespread. No longer, unskilled and uneducated people required and instead of high value on long term loyalty to the corporate institutions of the 20th century a shift to the self as the primary agent (i.e. a shift to I) had taken place. To sum up, Beck gives a new identity to risk which long has been dominated by rational doctrine. Manufactured Risks which are at the heart of the Modern society have become a taboo. The modern corporations have build a "Family of Myths" among which the most important is the "Myth of Rationality".

5 comments about A Dictionary of Epidemiology.

1. As a resident, I frequently prepared journal clubs, where we have to carefully discuss and scrutinize studies. I gained some introduction from "Appleton and Lange's Review of Epidemiology and Biostatistics for the USMLE". But preparing for journal clubs was quite different. There are many of statistical and epidemiological terminology in each article, some I am familiar with, but others are confusing and new. In this very helpful "dictionary" I was able to find more than 95% of the terms with brief definition and good short explanation that successfully allowed me to soundly evaluate the studies and prepare an impressive brief, neat handouts. The great thing about this dictionary was its well organization and ease to find what you are looking for. My friends frequently borrowed when they have to prepare their journal clubs, and found it really helpful.
   It is a dictionary; i.e., arranged alphabetically sequencing the terms, and if a term has more than one name, they mention them all, before the explanation.
   I highly recommended to every resident, as it will not only will help during residency, but also surely during real life and practice, especially a with hundreds of "trials, studies" appears in medical journal daily.
   I gave it four not five stars, because few explanation were rather short, despite informative, and lack of illustration and pictures, which may require you to use a regular textbook in Epidemiology, this happened maybe almost 1 from every 10 terms.



2. I'm a first year student in a doctoral program in epidemiology. This book has been a life saver!



3. A useful reference by John Last, which, I believe, will be his last edition. Beginning researchers, especially non-epidemiologists such as clinicians, will find that many of the statistical and epidemiologic terms which they encounter in the medical literature are defined here in one compact reference.



4. As a research and teaching assistant, as well as a 2nd year Epidemiology student, I have found this to be the absolute BEST book for resources within the subject. I have used this book to grade papers against (with definitions), and have used it in my own understanding of forgotten or convoluted concepts. If you want a very accurate, succinct definition of everything epi, you need this book. In fact, if you are involved in Epi in ANY way, you need this book. It is a wonderful book for an even better price. I carry it with me at all times.



5. I am a doctoral student in epidemiolgy and have been working in the field of public health for the past ten years. This book is highly recommended. It is particularly useful for MDs and other professionals who need quick and easily understandable explainations of epidemilogical terms.

No comments about Introduction to Epidemiology.

No comments about Coalescent Theory: An Introduction.

4 comments about Introductory Applied Biostatistics (with CD-ROM).

1. Visually is unappealing. The examples and tests lack answers to corroborate whether your efforts paid off. It looks like your paying a bundle for a photocopy version of the book....



2. In contrast to the first reviewer I loved this book! It should be pointed that I am reviewing this first official edition in hard cover with a CD-ROM while the first reviewer reviewed a preliminary edition in paperback with no CD and published in 2005 whereas this text has a 2006 copyright date.
   The authors are all statistics professors at Boston University with Ralph D'Agostino Sr. the most well-known. They have a great deal of experience as teachers researchers and consultants and it shows in the material and the clarity of presentation. Also to their credit, they provide numerous worked out examples in the text and plenty of exericises at the end of the chapters that can be given as homework problems. The other reviewer complained about not having any answers given in the back of the book. I question how valuable that would be. The in-text exercises and the clear exposition in the text , along with an instructor, should be enough for the students to gain enough confidence to try the homework problems with some confidence that they are doing them right! Also the instructor should have a solutions manual to work from or should put one together to go over the homework in class and/or in tutorial sections. Sometime students can waste a lot of time trying to force their solution to match the answer in the back of the book. What if there is a error or typo in the book's answer?
   
   I like the way the authors present the material and the fact that they illustrate the methodology with real examples and SAS software. Many of the analyses are done using the Framingham Heart Study data which is a well designed cohort study with thus far a long 50 year follow-up on the surviving original cohorts. We benefit from the authors' intimate knowledge of this data snd their ability to illustrate a variety of biostatistical methods using it. There is also an interesting follow-up study that was conducted with the offspring of the original Framington cohorts that is discussed in the book.
   
   The book starts with a motivating chapter. I did a similar thing in my introductory book for health science majors. Students in the health sciences are not very interested in math and may have a preconceived notion that statistics is boring mathematics and not relevant to their work. These ideas are very much off base and a good introductory chapter can dispell these notions. The next three chapters are standard to almost any first statistics course starting with ways to summarize data for description. This includes a section on statistical computing snd an introduction to the Framingham study and its data.
   
   Next an introductory chapter on probability is given that includes the basics and some important combinatorial ideas needed to understand the binomial distribution. Then the binomial and normal distributions are presented. This chapter and all subsequent chapters have a section on statistical computing using SAS. Appendix A provides the basic components of SAS that are needed to run analyses in SAS along with sample code and sample output.
   
   Next Chapter 4, as part of a logical progression, covers sampling distributions and the central limit theorem. Chapter 5 covers inference for a single sample mean and includes discussion of power and precision in the important practical problem of deciding how many subjects are needed to draw proper inferences from the trial. This deserves mention because many elementary statistics books avoid this topic and yet it is always one of the first questions a statistician is faced with when he is designing a clinical trial.
   
   Chapter 6 does essentially the same thing as 5 but for two sample problems where the difference of two means is often the key parameter. In the two sample problem there is the added complication of whether or not the two population variances are equal and/or the two sample sizes are equal. Methods are available for all of these situations. Also matched pair designs involve two correlated populations of equal size and can often improve precision over designs that use independent populations to compute the mean difference. Such analyses often come up in clinical trials when baseline and final values are compared for the same subject and for pre-intervention and post-intervention tests in educational trianing studies. Again power and precision the SAS procedures and the analysis of the Framingham Heart Study are given.
   
   The remaining chapters are Categorical Data (Chapter 7) Comparing risks in two populations (Chapter 8), Analysis of Variance (Chapter 9), Correlation and Regression (Chapter 10), Logistic Regression (Chapter 11), Nonparametric Tests (Chapter 12), and Introduction to Survival Analysis (Chapter 13). These are important chapters commonly included in introductory biostatistics texts but chapters such as 8, 10 and 12 are often not included in a general introductory statistics course.
   
   In addition to Appendix A on SAS, Appendix B provides the traditional statistical tables but also shows why the are no longer really necessary since all these table entries can be generated using software. In this case the authors demonstrate it with SAS. And finally, Appendix C provides additional information and data documentation on the Framingham Heart Study.
   
   This text would make a great course text for medical students and health science majors and could even be used as a first biostatistics course for either masters or PhD level statistics students who are interested in biostatistics. It also makes a good reference book for statisticians and biostatisticians.



3. This is a great textbook for an introduction to biostatistics. My "required" textbook for my Introduction to Biostatistical Methods was way to technical for me to understand. I got this book to translate and really learn the basics (I have little mathmatics background). Its geared to those who may not have had any statistics backgrounds and easy to read.



4. I have found this text book to be one of the most confusing I have ever read. I have trouble understanding the formulas and correlating them to the questions in the back of the chapters. And it is virtually impossible to use a reference book either. There is a lot of text that just runs together.

5 comments about Pdq Statistics (PDQ Series) Third Edition (PDQ).

1. I've spent years looking for a book on statistics that is lucid for professionals who need to use statistical methods but who don't want to get a Ph.D. in math to be able to undertand them.

   This book is the best. No incomprehensible Greek formulas. No tortured prose. And yet it's not just a mere introduction of what a mode is. It includes some advanced statistical methods and gives you all you need to know to understand what they do and how and when you would use them. It is long enough to describe each method sufficiently, including pitfalls and things to watch out for. Yet the book is short enough that reading it and undertanding the whole thing is possible in a modest length of time.

   You can stop searching now. This is the book.




2. This book is the only statistics book of its type. For each section covering a specific statistical method (from simple methods to those you may not even cover in your PhD training), a concise 2-5 page summary is presented. The goal is not to enable the reader to calculate any of these statistics, but to understand conceptually what each statistic means. This is where it can fill in information other statistics texts never get to. A student (or researcher!) who can churn out factorial ANOVA results, but doesn't truly understand what they mean can turn to this book for clarity. It's simple (for statistics), it's short, it's clear, and you have to love a book that is dedicated "To the many people who have made this book both possible and necessary -- authors of other statistics books"!



3. In these times, you can't walk in the streets without hear or read some statistics, in the paper, in the market or everywhere.
   This is the book not only for a biomedical student, is a book for anyone interested in know what is statistics about. The politicians and doctor can lie with statistics, but with the knowledge from this book, you can see beyond. The use of examples is extensive, and some of them are hilarious. It's a book very concise, informative and, the best of all, funny.



4. I must begin by stating that I didn't receive the book until the week of my exam. :( So, obviously I was not reliant on it. The book is small enough to be "not so" intimidating. It has relevant formulas and explanations to give one the gist of stats needed to pass a biostats class.
   
   My opinion of the book may have been better had the product arrived sooner.



5. I have a couple of other fat, authoratative biostats books but PDQ is my reference of choice. If you want to understand biostats, you can't lose with this clever concise text.

No comments about Epidemiology, Biostatistics and Preventive Medicine: With STUDENT CONSULT Online Access.

5 comments about High-Yield™ Biostatistics (High-Yield™ Series).

1. This dandy little book shares the keys of understanding college biostatistics with you. It's what you need to know to pass exams, boards and the like. It provides clear instruction on the essentials of descriptive and inferential statistics, hypothesis testing, correlational techniques, research methods, and statistics in epidemiology. For those who struggle with beginning and intermediate statistics classes, it's a jewel.



2. ACTUALLY GIVES A HIGHER YIELD IN MARKS-AMUST HAVE



3. Are you one of those people that are scared of Biostatistics? Fear no more!! This book is for you. It explains everything in a very smart and simple way. Plenty of examples and tests help you to master the subject. If you study this book well, you will "understand" biostatistics and you don't have to memorize nonsense informations. two thumbs up!



4. I first encountered this book when it was called "Biostatistics for the Boards" when I took the course from Dr. Glaser when he was teaching at the American University of the Caribbean School of Medicine in 1990. Dr. Glaser was an exceptionally good and popular teacher and the book reflects his "no-nonsense" style. At first I thought it was a "dumbed down" statistics book as I had taken a full year of stats in college and my previous books had been huge and heavy textbooks. However, I soon found that the reason Dr. Glaser's book was so brief was that he concentrates only on the type of concepts and questions you will find on the USMLE step 1. The chapters are short and it is easy to review each one many times to firmly plant the info into long term memory. I had no problems at all with the stats on the USMLE. This book presents exactly what you need to answer all the questions on the USMLE without having you waste a lot of time studying things you will never use.



5. Let's face it, you need to know Biostatistics/Epidemiology to do well on the USMLE and this book is just what most students need, to know the concepts that are repeatedly tested on the exam. I'd recommend this book to anyone. I only give it 4 stars because the writing, at times, may get a little hard to understand.

5 comments about Clinical Epidemiology: The Essentials.

1. Clinical Epidemiology has been considered the new 'Basic Science' to medical students. This book offers a excelent approach to main problems found by beginners in this vast field of knowledge like how to deal with Statistics and with the huge number of papers published. With a easy language this book is good option to get started in this branch of Medicine now called the 'Science of the Art'.



2. The authors explain the basic principles and basic concepts of clinical epidemiology in a clear and understandable way. Examples for each subject make reading pleasant and easy, contrary to what one may expect in a book of this kind.
   I recommend it for every person who is related to the health sciences and interested in obtaining the best out of medical literature.



3. Clinical Epidemiology has become a core element in the understanding and treatment of human illness. Defined as a method of generating valid conclusions from clinical observations, clinical epidemiology arms health practitioners with skills essential for modern health care. As a Physical Therapist (PT) I am often asked to render a diagnosis based on clinical hypotheses with "soft" measurements like pain, distress and function loss; how can I ensure that my diagnosis is correct? Traditional practice encourages the health care student to believe that knowing enough anatomy & physiology will somehow optimise health care outcomes. This book not only challenges that view but it also arms the reader with the knowledge and applicable skills to interpret research and also to ensure that any work you carry out is robust and in keeping with EBM principles. A highly recommended text and great value for money. A must for lecturers, student PT's and anyone who wonders how they can improve their critical analysis of health care practice. Don't treat patients without a copy on your shelf (assuming of course you read it...osmosis is NOT a recognised learning tool).



4. This is an essential book for any physicians or other medical personnel interested in evidence based medicine and reading of the medical literature. It is extremely well written and presents the materials in a coherent and understandable manner. It uses excellent examples to illustrate its points. We are using this text to introduct our first year medical residents to clinical epidemiology.



5. Well written book with good examples. I am recommending this book to many of our residents and fellows !