Principles of Biostatistics
Amit K. Chowdhry · Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series A (Statistics in Society) · 2023
Principles of Biostatistics is a classic biostatistics textbook that I have enjoyed using to help teach students biostatistics previously, and I was excited to see that a new edition of the textbook has come out. As with previous editions, this book is best suited for a wide variety of students, including undergraduates, Master of Public Health Students, and professional students in health-related professions. As with previous editions, the text is understandable and covers the fundamentals of biostatistics, including additional topics such as survival analysis, which are not often covered in other texts. In this edition, they have added a full chapter on screening and diagnostic tests. These topics are of critical importance for medical and public health professionals. During my undergraduate statistics and medical education, these topics were often covered in epidemiology courses, but it also deserves its place as a topic of importance in biostatistics education. Many introductory epidemiology and medical texts describe these topics without using conditional probability notation and an advantage of this textbook over those texts is it uses the language and notation of conditional probability. Also appreciated is the addition of a chapter on study design. Again, this topic is often covered in epidemiology texts, but the addition helps this book be a stand-alone introduction to biostatistics for students who may not have taken a course in epidemiology. Other notable additions include more resources for sample size calculation, more detail on sampling theory, accompanying Stata and R code, and a glossary. In conclusion, I give this textbook my highest recommendation for undergraduate and graduate health professions and public health students learning biostatistics for the first time.