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The book is very useful for those who wish to learn and apply statistical methods in practical situations, especially in the area of medical sciences. A simplified background of basic statistics provides a good start to understand the utility of statistical procedures under different circumstances. Simple examples based on medical applications keep the interest of the readers. The prime factors that make this book self-contained for medical professionals at the beginning level are the inclusion of vital and hospital statistics along with core statistical procedures. This book is also suitable for teaching medical students at the Post Graduate level. The book contains 19 chapters that cover all the requisite components for medical professionals working in the health care system.

The first 11 chapters are on data type and sources, collection, and presentation of the data, descriptive analysis of data, i.e., a measure of central tendency and dispersion; need and use of sampling procedure including methods of sample size calculation and sampling bias; interpretation of probability, ROC curves, odds; normal distribution also includes normal/Z scores; test of significance consists of different types of statistical tests; correlation and regression; vital statistics deals with different types of health indicators; research methodology provides good information for framing research questions, writing a paper/project, on software and internet use. Chapters 12-19 include the most important statistical procedures and basic concepts, which are required quite often in medical research, like Mc-Nemar, Kruskal Wallis test, and Kappa statistics. Statistical tables given at the end are helpful for understanding the application of statistical tests and finding solutions to the exercises.

It is a pleasure to go through this book and in my personal opinion, the type/nature of data serves as a baseline for the selection of any statistical procedure, which has been explained and exemplified up to a good extent. I recommend it to medical and paramedical students.