Dicing with Death
£19.99
GBPAs a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, medical statistics and public health data have become staples of newsfeeds worldwide, with infection rates, deaths, case fatality and the mysterious R figure featuring regularly. However, we don't all have the statistical background needed to translate this information into knowledge. In this lively account, Stephen Senn explains these statistical phenomena and demonstrates how statistics is essential to making rational decisions about medical care. The second edition has been thoroughly updated to cover developments of the last two decades and includes a new chapter on medical statistical challenges of COVID-19, along with additional material on infectious disease modelling and representation of women in clinical trials. Senn entertains with anecdotes, puzzles and paradoxes, while tackling big themes including: clinical trials and the development of medicines, life tables, vaccines and their risks or lack of them, smoking and lung cancer, and even the power of prayer.
- Explains the vital importance of statistical and probabilistic reasoning in scientific medicine, for example in the MMR debate
- Includes a brand new chapter on the statistics of COVID-19 and new material on the representation of women in clinical trials and on infectious disease modelling
- Written in a humorous style, illustrating its complex themes with accounts of puzzling, paradoxical and potentially misleading phenomena
Reviews & endorsements
'The COVID pandemic has shown the power of statistics to save millions of lives by revealing 'what works'. Yet statistical methods have a deeply controversial history, and provoke sometimes bitter debate to this day. Professor Stephen Senn is renowned for his brilliant insights on the subject, and in Dicing with Death he offers us a series of fascinating journeys through its vast and varied landscape.' Robert Matthews, Visiting Professor Aston University and author of Chancing It: The Laws of Chance and How They Can Work for You
'I will strongly recommend this book to statisticians as well as non-statisticians who are working in the area of public health or otherwise. Given the price of the book, it will be an asset to any personal library or University library.' Kuldeep Kumar, Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series A: Statistics in Society
Product details
December 2022Paperback
9781108999861
338 pages
229 × 153 × 20 mm
0.52kg
Available
Table of Contents
- 1. Circling the square
- 2. The diceman cometh
- 3. Trials of life
- 4. Of dice and men
- 5. Sex and the single patient
- 6. A hale view of pills (and other matters)
- 7. Time's tables
- 8. A dip in the pool
- 9. The things that bug us
- 10. The law is a ass
- 11. The empire of the sum
- 12. Going viral
- Notes
- Index.
