Clinical Data Analysis on a Pocket Calculator: Understanding the Scientific Methods of Statistical Reasoning and Hypothesis Testing - Softcover

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The authors are well-qualified in their field. Professor Zwinderman is past-president of the International Society of Biostatistics (2012-2015), and Professor Cleophas is past-president of the American College of Angiology (2000-2002). From their expertise they should be able to make adequate selections of modern methods for clinical data analysis for the benefit of physicians, students, and investigators. The authors have been working and publishing together for 17 years, and their research can be characterized as a continued effort to demonstrate that clinical data analysis is not mathematics but rather a discipline at the interface of biology and mathematics.

The authors as professors and teachers in statistics at universities in The Netherlands and France for the most part of their lives, are convinced that the scientific method of statistical reasoning and hypothesis testing is little used by physicians and other health workers, and they hope that the current productionwill help them find the appropriate ways for answering their scientific questions.   

Three textbooks complementary to the current production and written by the same authors are Statistics applied to clinical studies 5th edition, 2012, Machine learning in medicine a complete overview, 2015, SPSS for starters and 2nd levelers, 2015, all of them edited by Springer Heidelberg Germany.

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Ineveryone's life the day comes that medical and health care has the highestpriority. It is unbelievable, that a field, so important, uses the scientificmethod so little. The current book is helpful for implementation of thescientific method in the daily life of medical and health care workers. Fromreaders' comments to the first editions of this work, the authors came torealize that statistical software programs is experienced by professionals inthe field as black box programs producing lots of p-values, but little answersto scientific questions, and many readers had not been happy with thatsituation. The pocket calculator analyses appeared to be, particularly,appreciated, because they enabled readers for the first time to understand thescientific methods of statistical reasoning and hypothesis testing. So much so,that it started something like a new dimension in their professional world.

We should add a number of statistical methods can be performed more easily on a pocketcalculator, than using a software program. Also, there are some specific advantages of thepocket calculator method. You better understand what you are doing. The pocketcalculator works faster, because far less steps have to be taken, averages canbe used. With statistical software all individual data have to be included separately,a time-consuming activity in case of large data files. Some analyticalmethods, for example, power calculations and required sample size calculationsare difficult on a statistical software program, and easy on a pocketcalculator.

The reason for a rewrite was to giveupdated and upgraded versions of the forty chapters from the first editions,including the valuable comments of readers. Like in the textbook complementaryto the current work, entitled "SPSS for Starters and 2nd Levelers"(Springer Heidelberg 2015, from the same authors), an improved structure of thechapters was produced, including background, main purpose, scientific question,schematic overview of data files, and reference sections. In addition, for theanalysis of more complex data twenty novel chapters were written. We showedthat, also here, a pocket calculator can be very helpful.

For the readers' convenience the chaptershave been reclassified according to the most basic difference in datacharacteristics: continuous outcome data (34 chapters), binary outcome data (26chapters). Both hypothesized and real data examples are used to explain thesixty pocket calculator methods described. The arithmetic is of a no-more-thanhigh-school level.