Dicing with Death

Preface; 1. Circling the square; 2. The diceman cometh; 3. Trials of life; 4. Of dice and men; 5. Sex and the single patient; 6. A hale view of pills; 7. Time's tables; 8. A dip in the pool; 9. Things that bug us; 10. The law is a ass; 11. The empire of the sum.

Senn, Stephen
Stephen Senn is a medical statistician with a varied career in industry, public health and academia. He has won the Bradford Hill medal of the Royal Statistical Society and the George C. Challis prize of the University of Florida. Senn is an honorary life member of ISCB and PSI and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh.

'... thought provoking and rewarding ... whether your taste is for the nitty-gritty of controversies, like the alleged link between childhood MMR vaccination and autism, or for pensive reflection on the philosophy of knowledge, you will find much of value here.' New Scientist 'Senn is urbane, charming, and often funny ... you might need a dictionary occasionally, but otherwise you can read this in bed or on the beach, and it won't be out of place. Bandolier loved it.' Bandolier '... an entertaining read, and a book to make you fell good about being a statistician? Very much so! ... I defy pharmaceutical statisticians anywhere not to benefit ... a great read. This is the ideal book for the pharmaceutical statistician who wants to broaden their knowledge of their chosen subject.' Pharmaceutical Statistics '... [a] remarkable achievement ... in a slim paperback that is best read cover to over ... Stephen Senn has attempted to do for medical statistics what Stephen Hawking did for physics in A Brief History of Time ... and Simon Singh did for pure mathematics in Fermat's Last Theorem. I think he has succeeded.' BMJ 'Senn sets out to explain how important statistics is and takes the reader on a wild, thought-provoking and always entertaining ride through biostatistics and beyond ... is often uproariously funny, which is remarkable in a book that covers so much technical, philosophical and historical ground.' Canadian Medical Association Journal 'Dicing with Death is a rarity: a book about statistics for the general public ... Senn certainly seems to have had fun ... there is plenty of solid stuff mixed in with the fun. If you're tired of trying to persuade people that "statisticians count", why not take the easy way out and give them this book?' Journal of the Royal Statistical Society 'The style of the book is discursive and it is very entertaining ... In addition to being excellent for students and practitioners of the subject, it should be made essential reading for