Essentials of Biostatistics in Public Health: .

We had to use this textbook for my biostatistics class, and I was pleasantly surprised with it. I've taken a lot of science/statistics classes in the past, and do understand that many times statistic books can be somewhat difficult to comprehend. However, this is not the case with this book. The book was very well written, and easy to understand as long as you spent sufficient time to study and comprehend the material. Don't be fooled, biostatistics can be a very difficult subject to grasp (I spent HOURS studying), but this book does a very good job of explaining it as best as it can. Many of the 3- star ratings will be from those who are grading their review of the book based upon the difficulty of the subject, not on the content within the textbook.The only chapter that I found to not be very helpful was a later chapter on multiple linear regression analysis. The online material here, helps you to understand much better and fill in the gaps that the physical textbook left out. Being in chapter 8, and having to refer back to the same example back in chapter 3 over and over again, can get kind of annoying as well, but aside from these two very minor issues (well, ok, 1 minor issue. I missed 4 questions on my final from the multiple linear regression analysis crahp. That needs to be fixed.) the textbook was very well written, gave clear examples, and was very fair in its review questions at the end of each chapter.

Ok so at first I rented this book because I got tired of paying steep prices for textbooks. Then after I used it for my course I went back and bought it brand new! This book is awesome and I cannot express how easy it was to follow and help understand the challenging concept of Biostatistics. That course was allegedly one of the most challenging in my field but this book made it super easy. I even use it to complete later coursework because the text for those courses are so confusing. If you have it keep it, if you need it buy it, if you don't have it you are probably not a scientist:)

I have been using Essentials of Biostatistics for Public Health and it is a great book for graduate public health students esp for the introduction to Biostatistcs.I am now using it every time with my class.Since it's our number one reference book and our excel lab is also entirely the same it's a must to have one.It's examples are relevant and upto date giving an idea of the types of situations Biostatistics is applicable in.Buy one and enjoy it.Dan

This textbook is one of the few math related books that I actually read through the whole semester and didn't dread the weekly readings. The formulas were explained and built on in ways I felt comfortable with and could follow. I also found the sample problems worked out in the textbook to be understandable in one read through (a phenomenon I don't usually experience with quantitative textbook examples) without having the process explained by someone else first.

This book is god awful when it comes to structure, variety, and explaining in a concise manner. Starting with structure, the book is very table and detail heavy. This makes for a frustrating combination because while details are typically appreciated especially in a statistics book, certain paragraphs will refer to tables that are sometimes a few pages over either because there is so much detail or so many damn tables. This involves flipping back and forth constantly between pages so you can figure out what the author is talking about and that makes studying this material absolutely tedious. As for variety, there is not much of a wide breadth of studies that make the book interesting. It deals with the Framington Heart Study heavily and little else. This may have its advantages insofar as its consistency keeps readers from getting confused but it makes for one of the most monotonous reads I have ever had in a textbook or any book for that matter. Finally, though I previously mentioned that details can be good for statistics books there is a point where too much detail can confuse the reader because it gives them too much to keep track of. That is certainly the case here and no additional favors are granted to this by the poor structure either. The only thing that honestly makes this book worth it is the online workbook which gives you a helpful hand in learning functions and statistical analysis in excel. Be warned though, because they put about a year and half limit as to how long you can access the workbook. This also means that if you want the most useful part of the textbook you pretty much have to buy a new copy out of sheer necessity. If your professor assigns this book, make sure you have lots of time to read it because its trifecta of unnecessary frustrations will take you a while to drudge through. I would recommend supplemental reading as well like that of Biostatistics: The Bare Essentials by Norman and Streiner. They actually manage to add humor to Biostatistics while avoiding the aforementioned problems. Only bad thing is that they don't use excel so you would still have to buy Sullivan's loathsome book.

I was actually shocked how this book captured my attention and explained in great detail the material. I was intimidated at first, but as my online course progressed I noticed this book was an easy read. I loved how the author refereed back to previous concepts to make sure the reader understands why and how the answer is what it is.

Amazon left this package somewhere that my dog could grab it from under the door. 😭

Thank you Amazon!!! The book is definitely new though I have not tried to access the online workbook as of yet but at least I have the code key which I diD not have with the USED book sent my Las Cruces pretending to be NEW!