Dicing with death : chance, risk, and health / Stephen Senn.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Senn, Stephen, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Medical statistics.

Medicine--Philosophy.

Medicine.

Medical care--Statistical methods.

Medical care.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xii, 251 pages) : digital, PDF file(s).

Place of Publication:

Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 2003.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

If you think that statistics has nothing to say about what you do or how you could do it better, then you are either wrong or in need of a more interesting job. Stephen Senn explains here how statistics determines many decisions about medical care, from allocating resources for health, to determining which drugs to license, to cause-and-effect in relation to disease. He tackles big themes: 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. He entertains with puzzles and paradoxes and covers the lives of famous statistical pioneers. By the end of the book the reader will see how reasoning with probability is essential to making rational decisions in medicine, and how and when it can guide us when faced with choices that impact on our health and even life.

Contents:

Circling the square

The diceman cometh

Trials of life

Of dice and men

Sex and the single patient

A hale view of pills

Time's tables

A dip in the pool

The things that bug us

The law is a ass

The empire of the sun.

Notes:

Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 05 Oct 2015).

Includes bibliographical references (p. 231-244) and index.

ISBN:

1-107-13929-5

1-107-38591-1

1-280-42184-3

9786610421848

0-511-20376-4

0-511-17972-3

0-511-07883-8

0-511-30666-0

0-511-54331-X

0-511-07726-2

OCLC:

71280138