Description
Springer Biostatistics Cookbook by S. Michelson , T. Schofield
We Live In A Very Uncertain World. Variation Surrounds Our Work. There Is Noise In Our Experiments In Our Measurements And In Our Test Subjects. From All These Sources Of Uncertainty And Variation We Try To Extract A Coherent Picture Of Very Complex And Sometimes Dynamic Biological And Chemical Processes. In Fact One Of Our Major Challenges Is To Separate This Signal The Real Biology Or Chemistry From The Noise. The Tools Developed To Do This Are Called Collectively Biostatistics. Any Tool Even A Hammer Can Be Misused. This Could Result At Best In Inefficiency And At Worst In Disaster. With The Advent Of Newer Us- Friendly Statistical Software Packages Desk Top Computing And Point-A- Click Technologies It Is Easier Than Ever To Make Mistakes In Your Analyses. The Beauty Of Having Access To So Much Computing Power Is That You Can Now Enjoy Ultimate Flexibility In Data Processing: That Can Also Be A Problem. Ask Your Computer To Produce A Particular Analysis Report Or Graphic And That Is Exactly What You Will Get: If You Happen To Have Asked For The Wrong Thing It Will Be Produced Just As Quickly And You Will Probably Never Know It Was Wrong. One Aim Of This Handbook Is To Help You Choose The Correct Tool For The Job At Hand Understand Its Strengths And Weaknesses And To Help You Recognize When You Should Seek Expert Advice. We Describe Biostatistics As A Collection Of Tools For Very Good Reasons.