Beth Dawson-Saunders and Robert G. Trapp. 329 pages. Norwalk, Connecticut: Appleton and Lange; 1990. $29.95.

A successful introductory statistics text targeted to a particular field or profession (for example, medicine, marketing, education) will show knowledge of and facility with the particular substantive field, will present statistical concepts and methods clearly and without an overload of unnecessary detail, and will contain numerous illustrative examples and exercises that have a contemporary flavor. The text by Dawson-Saunders, a statistician, and Trapp, a rheumatologist, originally published in 1990 and already in its third printing, fulfills these criteria.

The text covers the basics of statistics through analysis of variance and regression, along with some topics of special relevance to clinicians but not usually seen in introductory biostatistics texts. Such topics include survival analysis, study designs in medical research, evaluating diagnostic procedures, clinical decision making, and reading the medical literature.

The statistical concepts are presented in just the right amount of detail and without emphasis on formulas and computations. The authors illustrate these statistical techniques and concepts with a wide variety of examples and exercises, many of which are taken from the medical literature. The authors' use of illustrations and schematics to clarify concepts also facilitates learning. The display of computer output from commonly used statistical software packages showing solutions to illustrative examples should be useful to the reader who interprets such output.

Most chapters begin with presenting problems, which are medical examples to which the techniques presented later in the chapter are applied. This practical approach can motivate the student.

This excellent book could serve as a text in biostatistics and epidemiology targeted at medical audiences (medical students, fellows, and so forth). It is hoped that the authors will periodically update their text so that it can remain alive and relevant.