Dicing with death : chance, risk, and health /
"Statisticians are engaged in exhausting but exhilarating struggle with the biggest challenge that philosophy makes to science: how do we translate information into knowledge? Statistics tells us how to evaluate evidence, how to design experiments, how to turn data into decisions, how much cred...
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| Main Author: | |
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| Format: | Electronic eBook |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
New York :
Cambridge University Press,
2003.
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | CONNECT |
| Summary: | "Statisticians are engaged in exhausting but exhilarating struggle with the biggest challenge that philosophy makes to science: how do we translate information into knowledge? Statistics tells us how to evaluate evidence, how to design experiments, how to turn data into decisions, how much credence should be given to whom to what and why, how to reckon chances and when to take them. Statistics deals with the very essence of the universe: chance and contingency are its discourse and statisticians know the vocabulary. 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."--Jacket. |
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| Item Description: | EBSCO eBook Academic Comprehensive Collection North America |
| Physical Description: | 1 online resource (xii, 251 pages) : illustrations |
| Bibliography: | Includes bibliographical references (pages 231-244) and index. |
| ISBN: | 0511078838 9780511078835 9780521832595 0521832594 0521540232 9780521540230 |
