Long before I had any inkling that I would write a book, I learned that apreface is the author’s attempt to engage the reader in a leisurely conversation before serious joint work begins. In that spirit, I ask you to spend a moment with me now. Although an important focus of my training and daily work is in mathematics and statistics, I have found that many health care workers in general, and physicians in particular, have difficulty understanding research issues when they are presented mathe- matically. Statistical principles in medicine are relatively straight- forward and can be’ easily absorbed without a heavy mathematical preamble. I have come to believe that the underlying research principles are not difficult; what is difficult is the mathematics in which the principles are embedded. The mathematical medium often distorts and confuses the research message for nonmathe- maticians. I wrote this book to explain the statistical principles in health care in fairly nonmathematical terms.
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