Dicing with Death: Chance, Risk and Health

by Stephen Senn

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 our health and/or life. Stephen Senn has been a Professor of Pharmaceutical and Health Statistics at the University College of London since 1995. In 2001 he won George C. Challis Award of the University of Florida for contributions to biostatistics. Senn's previous two books are Statistical Issues in Drug Development (Wiley, 1997) and Cross-over Trials in Clinical Research (Wiley, 1993). He is the member of seven editorial boards including Statistics in Medicine and Pharmaceutical Statistics.

Genres: Science, Nonfiction, Medicine, Mathematics, Health

264 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2003

Reviews

[Jalaluddin Abdullah · Rating 5 out of 5]

The focus is on statistics in medicine, but the book zigzags through recent issues (ethics and politics of clinical trials, lawyer's abuse of statistical evidence, vaccine scares), sometimes sophisticated analysis of particular data, combined with an explanation and history of basic concepts, with half-page biographies of historical and modern statisticians going far beyond the usual suspects. Has the lively style of The Economist, addressing a mentally alert adult reader rather than a casual reader or bored student. In particular, readers who have taken one course in statistics will get a view of "the big picture", and this is the best single book for that purpose.

[Haaris Mateen · Rating 4 out of 5]

A statistician would thoroughly enjoy the book. The author is so deeply in love with the subject that it sloshes all over the place. He does a great job of explaining different eras of statistics and brings it together in a roughly stitched narrative. From this frame it's one of those books you'd want to read after doing some courses in statistics; you'd then want to read this book and go back with an "ah" to the stuff that you just crammed in earlier.

However, it won't be a good book for the amateur reader or even a math enthusiast. The book is advanced and it can easily become tedious and boring for those who don't have to be interested in the nerdy lives of statisticians - I would but that's me - or the fine differences between the two factions today.

Read it only if, at the very least, you've used some stats in your life.

[Tobias Schmidt-Gönner · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good Start, mostly good read, but it starts to get boring after a while. The nth famous statisticians life is not able to keep my interest between the calculations. Especially when they get more and more obscure.
All in all I know now more about statistics than before, but the author didn't manage to get the result he set out to achieve, convincing his reader that his subject is fascinating subject in itself instead of a necessary evil.