Making Sense of Medical Statistics

Munier Hossain is a Consultant Orthopaedic Surgeon with an interest in medical education. He is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, member of the editorial board of Bone and Joint Journal 360, and a primary editor of the Bone and Joint Journal. He holds an MSc in evidence-based healthcare from the University of Oxford, UK. He has been teaching statistics and evidence-based healthcare for over a decade and has authored several book chapters on medical statistics for trainee doctors.

• Preface; Acknowledgements; How to get the best out of this book; 1. Medicine and numbers: what is the connection?; 2. Measuring a variable: what is the difference between eye colour and height; 3. Summarising data: communicating easily; 4. Why average and range is not always enough: standard deviation and standard error; 5. The normal distribution: what's so 'normal' about it?; 6. Confidence interval: what is your guesstimate?; 7. Innocent until proven guilty! The null hypothesis; 8. Errors in hypothesis tests: learn your α from your β; 9. The randomized controlled trial: why does it have to be random?; 10. Choosing a statistical test: to t or not to t?; 11. Finding the odd one out: the ANOVA test; 12. Categorically different? The Chi-Squared test; 13. If the line fits: correlation and linear regression; 14. Hindsight is 20/20: logistic regression; 15. Don't risk the odds. risk vs odds as the outcome measure; 16. I will survive! Time to event data analysis; 17. High-ceiling or low threshold? Accuracy of a diagnostic test; 18. Apples or oranges? Meta-analysis of selected studies; 19. Lies, damned lies and statistics: untangling facts from fiction!; Glossary; Appendix 1. Are you ready to test yourself? Single Best Answer questionnaire; Appendix 2. Software and practice problems; Appendix 3. Practice database; Appendix 4. References and further reading; Appendix 5. Further resources.

'An accessible book by a practising doctor, aimed at other doctors, which explains key statistical concepts in words and pictures. An excellent foundation for those seeking to understand the numbers in medical journal articles and quantitative reports.' Professor Trish Greenhalgh, University of Oxford, UK