Systematic Glossary of the Terminology of Statistical Methods

The OECD Glossary contains a comprehensive set of over 6 700 definitions of key terminology, concepts and commonly used acronyms derived from existing international statistical guidelines and recommendations.

This outline of statistics as an aid in decision making will introduce a reader with limited mathematical background to the most important modern statistical methods. This is a revised and enlarged version, with major extensions and additions, of my "Angewandte Statistik" (5th ed.), which has proved useful for research workers and for consulting statisticians. Applied statistics is at the same time a collection of applicable statistical methods and the application of these methods to measured and/or counted observations. Abstract mathematical concepts and derivations are avoided. Special emphasis is placed on the basic principles of statistical formulation, and on the explanation of the conditions under which a certain formula or a certain test is valid. Preference is given to consideration of the analysis of small sized samples and of distribution-free methods. As a text and reference this book is written for non-mathematicians, in particular for technicians, engineers, executives, students, physicians as well as researchers in other disciplines. It gives any mathematician interested in the practical uses of statistics a general account of the subject. Practical application is the main theme; thus an essential part of the book consists in the 440 fully worked-out numerical examples, some of which are very simple; the 57 exercises with solutions; a number of different compu tational aids; and an extensive bibliography and a very detailed index. In particular, a collection of 232 mathematical and mathematical-statistical tables serves to enable and to simplify the computations.

Clinical trials are used to elucidate the most appropriate preventive, diagnostic, or treatment options for individuals with a given medical condition. Perhaps the most essential feature of a clinical trial is that it aims to use results based on a limited sample of research participants to see if the intervention is safe and effective or if it is comparable to a comparison treatment. Sample size is a crucial component of any clinical trial. A trial with a small number of research participants is more prone to variability and carries a considerable risk of failing to demonstrate the effectiveness of a given intervention when one really is present. This may occur in phase I (safety and pharmacologic profiles), II (pilot efficacy evaluation), and III (extensive assessment of safety and efficacy) trials. Although phase I and II studies may have smaller sample sizes, they usually have adequate statistical power, which is the committee's definition of a "large" trial. Sometimes a trial with eight participants may have adequate statistical power, statistical power being the probability of rejecting the null hypothesis when the hypothesis is false. Small Clinical Trials assesses the current methodologies and the appropriate situations for the conduct of clinical trials with small sample sizes. This report assesses the published literature on various strategies such as (1) meta-analysis to combine disparate information from several studies including Bayesian techniques as in the confidence profile method and (2) other alternatives such as assessing therapeutic results in a single treated population (e.g., astronauts) by sequentially measuring whether the intervention is falling above or below a preestablished probability outcome range and meeting predesigned specifications as opposed to incremental improvement.

This book contains over 1500 research and statistical terms, written in jargon-free, easy-to-understand terminology to help students understand difficult concepts in their research courses. This pocket guide is in an ideal supplement to the many discipline-specific texts on research methods and statistics.

This book is a reference for librarians, mathematicians, and statisticians involved in college and research level mathematics and statistics in the 21st century. We are in a time of transition in scholarly communications in mathematics, practices which have changed little for a hundred years are giving way to new modes of accessing information. Where journals, books, indexes and catalogs were once the physical representation of a good mathematics library, shelves have given way to computers, and users are often accessing information from remote places. Part I is a historical survey of the past 15 years tracking this huge transition in scholarly communications in mathematics. Part II of the book is the bibliography of resources recommended to support the disciplines of mathematics and statistics. These are grouped by type of material. Publication dates range from the 1800's onwards. Hundreds of electronic resources-some online, both dynamic and static, some in fixed media, are listed among the paper resources. Amazingly a majority of listed electronic resources are free.