International Journal of Epidemiology 2000;29:1101-1102
© International Epidemiological Association 2000
Book Review |
Statistics for Veterinary and Animal Science.
Aviva Petrie, Paul Watson. UK: Blackwell Science, 2000, pp.256, £19.99. ISBN: 0–632–05025–X.
Do not be put off by the title of this new paperback if you are not a vet. This new introductory text has many commendable features. Each session has clear learning objectives and revision multiple choice questionnaires. More complex topics are highlighted with an icon so they can be skipped. There are plenty of figures and examples. Key definitions are boxed. There are extensive appendices with key statistical tables, glossaries and useful flow charts for choosing appropriate tests. Clearly, the animal examples may put off non-veterinary epidemiologists but the book is generally well written and avoids mathematical jargon or symbols. In many respects, it goes into greater detail than expected for such a text. For example there is a section on the problems of multiple comparisons. My main criticisms relate to the non-statistical sections which are covered at a much more superficial level. For example, the explanation of confounding may leave some students perplexed. Similarly, there is no mention of the problems of bias with respect to case-control studies. One surprising omission, given the nature of the readership, is in relation to critical appraisal. It would have been helpful to have provided statistical guidelines such as those used by the British Medical Journal.
The authors suggest that this book could be used as self-instructional, but I suspect most students would struggle without the support of a course. It would have also been helpful if the authors could have provided sample datasets, either on disk or to be downloaded from a website, so that students could gain hands-on experience. Despite these quibbles, I feel this book is an excellent resource for both undergraduates and postgraduates.
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