Pharmaceutical Statistics

by David S. Jones and David Jones

Pharmaceutical Statistics is a new publication on basic statistics, specifically written for pharmacy students. It contains chapters on basic concepts such as types of data, graphical representation... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0853694257
• ISBN13: 9780853694250
• Release Date: January 2002
• Publisher: Pharmaceutical Press
• Length: 608 Pages
• Weight: 2.25 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 6.3" x 9.2"

Customer Reviews

While Jones might be the best, no single statistics book is adequate for all common formulas.

Pharmaceutical Statistics (2008) by David Jones is 586 pages long and printed on high quality semi-glossy paper. The book excels in that it tends to disclose the theory behind the equations, rather than just the equations alone, and in that it provides a representative number of examples for each equation. A particular virtue of David Jones' book is that, in providing an example, it expressly discloses each step or operation that is used to solve the problem. In contrast, some statistics books just present the equations with no examples at all, or with only one example. In buying this book, I was specifically interested in understanding standard deviations, the Z statistic, the t statistic, p values, confidence intervals, alpha values, hazard ratios, Wilcoxon rank sum test, critical values, sample size and power calculations, hazard ratios, logrank statistics, and survival curves (Kaplan-Meier curves). In setting out to understand these equations, I also bought and read: (1) Dawson and Trapp (2004) Basic & Clinical Biostatistics (Lange Series); (2) Durham and Turner (2008) Introduction to Statistics in Pharmaceutical Clinical Trials; (3) Kirkwood and Sterne (2003) Medical Statistics; and (4) Motulsky (1995) Intuitive Biostatistics. I found Jones to be the best of these, because of the fact that it contains plenty of examples, and because of its stepwise explanations of how to solve the examples. On the other hand, Jones is not a stand-alone learning tool for clinical statistics. KAPLAN-MEIER PLOTS. Jones fails to disclose Kaplan-Meier curves. For this topic, I refer the reader to the excellent discussion in Dawson & Turner. Kirkwood (pages 272-286) also discloses survival curves. But Lange (pages 221-244)is by far the best for this topic. Z STATISTIC DECISION TREE. Once a Z statistic is calculated, you are faced with a decision tree. You can go to an appendix (usually the first appendix in any statistics book) and find the corresponding probability. Or you can compare the Z statistic with a CRITICAL VALUE. On page 312, Jones tells us to go to the appendix for plugging in a Z statistic. But this appears to be a mistake. Instead, I find that Jones should have told the reader to go to pages 111-112, for comparing the Z statistic with a CRITICAL VALUE. At any rate, if this is a mistake, it is only a slight inconvenience. STANDARDIZED NORMAL DISTRIBUTION TABLE. The Z statistic is discussed at various parts in Jones. These discussions go hand in hand with the Standardized Normal Distribution table in the appendix. However, there are two slight problems. The appendix in Jones is inconvenient because plugging in your Z value results in a probability, but this probability is incorrect unless you subtract the resultant probability from 1.0. Hence, in using the Jones book as a learning device, I recommend avoiding Jones' appendix, and instead plugging all Z values into Durham's Standardized Normal Distribution Table (Appendi