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Practical use of biostatistics: For medical, allied sciences & research professional
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This article was originally published by Medknow Publications & Media Pvt Ltd and was migrated to Scientific Scholar after the change of Publisher.
This book is yet another addition to a number of books on basic biostatistics available for beginners. The contents of the book seem to be tailored for beginners/students in medical and dental colleges and might be of use to those preparing for postgraduate entrance examination. The multiple choice questions at the end of the book will be of particular use. The logarithmic and statistical tables should be of good use, although in an era of computers and statistical software all these are readily available.
There is a chapter on multivariable analysis (chapter 9) which describes some of the methods with a few illustrations. The author should have mentioned about the various assumptions involved, the sample size-variable type and size requirement and appropriate meaning of the various statistical parameters and terms (regression coefficients, variance, explained the meaning of odds ratio, the range it can take, etc.) such that the book acts as a manual for a non-mathematics student who is not familiar with these terms.
The language of the book is poor and does not convey what it purports to convey and contains errors, also new terms are brought in out of context, for example, (i) on page no. 204, P value is always positive. ‘It is lied between 0 and 1’; (ii) page no. 207, ‘apply Fishers exact test’, but why?; (iii) page no. 213, ‘principal component analysis, helps us in finding out composite sample parsimoniously’, etc, conveys totally wrong meaning. The other chapters also have such errors.
It looks as though the book has not been peer-reviewed properly before final print and release in the market. There is mention of the references to the various data used for illustration and the author has referenced for writing the various topics discussed.
Overall, it seems that the non-statistical reader will get even more confused after going through this volume.
