Public health strives to improve the health of human populations, and prevent disease, disability, and death. Statistics--the science of finding underlying patterns by analyzing variability and errors in collected data--is essential to the understanding of disease patterns in human populations. Other quantitative methods, such as economics, decision theory, and mathematics, now constitute integral parts of the scientific basis for priority-setting and evaluation in public health.
This book provides a broad conceptual treatment of the statistical issues underlying core public health...