Statistics in dental research: A book review

In a addition to the previous post on statistics in dental research, I'd like to mention that Medical Statistics at a Glance is the best book on the subject I've seen. It contains all the basic things a dental materials scientist needs to know, from study designs, types of data and descriptive statistics to hypothesis testing, correlation and regression, survival analysis and Bayesian methods. The book is written in an exceptionally succinct and reader-friendly way, understandable to researchers with very little previous knowledge on statistics.

Theory is only given in the amount which is necessary to understand each concept. A very good feature of the book is that it explains most commonly used statistical tests in dental research: t-tests, analysis of variance (ANOVA), the non-parametric Mann-Whitney and Kruskal-Wallis test, chi-squared and McNemar's test. The assumptions for these tests are given but situations with departures from these assumptions are mentioned in terms of their effect and possible solutions.

Also, statistics for some more complex study designs is also presented, such as generalized linear models, multiple linear regression or methods for clustered data.

Medical Statistics at a Glance also serves as a fantastic reminder with an informative glossary and a detailed index of terms. It is an excellent value for money. I bought a new copy on eBay for about £20 but I'm sure it can be found elsewhere on the internet.

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