BOOK REVIEWS
demonstrate the kind of data normally encoun-
tered. Then, the statistical model is introduced
and described, concluding with a statement about
the objectives of the techniques. The techniques
are applied to the demonstration data set and
the necessary computations are shown in some
detail. For the more complex statistical techniques,
this is done through matrix manipulations (this,
together with a short chapter on matrix algebra in
the appendix, provides a simple introduction to
matrices with many worked through examples).
Then, statistical testing is discussed (only rarely is
calculation of confidence intervals etc. discussed,
and it is not discussed at all whether statistical
testing is appropriate in observational studies
with no random sampling). Each chapter con-
cludes with a demonstration of how the statistical
techniques are used with the SPSS statistical
package and how the SPSS output looks. Here and
there, I disagree with information in part II.
For example, under the heading ‘latent structure
analysis’ the author describes factor analysis
and canonical correlations but does not mention
latent class analysis at all. This is contrary to
the original meaning of latent structure analysis,
introduced by Lazarsfeld.2 The chapter on factor
analysis also puts much emphasis on methods for
factor extraction, with description of several out-
dated methods. However, in general the text gives
a good introduction with many pieces of sound
advice.
4. QUERCUS: STATISTICS FOR BIOSCIENTISTS. A STU-
DENT GUIDEBOOK. Moya McCloskey, Steve
Blythe and Chris Robertson, Arnold, U.K., 1997.
No. of pages: 160. No. of discs: 3. Quercus consists
of software that can be downloaded free to all
educational establishments from http:/www.
stams.strath.ac.uk/external/quercus as well as a ‘A
student guidebook’, list price £12.99. ISBN 0-3406-
7768-6
QUERCUS is a collection of interactive modules
implemented for microcomputers with the aim of
teaching the basic concepts of statistics. The whole
course is dedicated to undergraduate bioscience
students and was developed as a part of the Teach-
ing and Learning Technology Programme sup-
ported by a consortium of universities including
( 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
2419
To conclude, the strengths of this book are the
hands-on approach to the analytical techniques
and the good description of statistical techniques
for people that like text better than equations. The
weaknesses are the narrow selection of statistical
techniques and the general lack of references to
recent statistical work. For the applied researcher
in medicine or public health, the book lacks too
many important methods to serve as a first text-
book. For the topics this book offers beyond the
standard biostatistical textbook (discriminant
analysis, factor analysis and canonical correlation
analysis), I would generally recommend more fo-
cused topic-specific books.
JAKOB BUE BJORNER
Institute of Public Health
ºniversity of Copenhagen
Blegdamsvej 3
DK-2200 Copenhagen N, Denmark
REFERENCES
1. Whittaker, J. Graphical Models in Applied
Multivariate Analysis, Wiley, New York, 1990.
2. Lazarsfeld, P. F. ‘The logical and mathematical
foundation of latent structure analysis’, in
Stouffer, S. A., Guttman, L., Suchman, E. A.,
Lazarsfeld, P. F., Star, S. A., Clausen, J. A. (eds),
Measurement and Prediction, Princeton Univer-
sity Press, Princeton, 1950.
Strathclyde, Heriot-Watt, Edinburgh and Stirling
Universities.
The course consists of twelve modules called
Work Books, each designed as a computer labor-
atory session with precisely defined objectives, and
of ten modules called Exercise Books, each provid-
ing an extra practice to the corresponding Work-
Book and complemented by a short self-assess-
ment test. All modules with additional resource
and configuration files are collected on three
floppy disks. Their installation is fast and smooth.
The disks are supplemented by A Student Guide-
book, and by an Installation and ºser Guide.
The problem of tiring calculations as well
as tedious plotting of diagrams and graphs,
which usually occurs when teaching even simple
statistics, was omitted from the course with
Statist. Med. 17, 2415—2420 (1998)
2420 BOOK REVIEWS
the help of a popular statistical package, MINITAB.
Of course, QUERCUS provides a necessary intro-
duction to this package, and, owing to the
Windows environment, also provides the possi-
bility of activating MINITAB during QUERCUS
sessions.
WorkBook 1 demonstrates the common classi-
fication of variables and simultaneously shows
various features of all workbooks. A short intro-
duction to the MINITAB package occupies Work-
Books 2a and 2b. WorkBook 3 deals with visualiz-
ing data, which includes histograms, box plots, dot
plots and stem-and-leaf plots. From WorkBooks
4 and 5 students can learn about location and
variability measures with emphasis on the skew-
ness of distribution and the outliers problem.
WorkBook 6 is devoted to the sampling distribu-
tion with some stress on the need for random
selection of experimental units. This gives a back-
ground to confidence intervals, explained in
WorkBook 7, and to testing simple hypotheses,
presented in WorkBook 8. The content of the
remaining workbooks covers the basics of the
most popular methods dealing with experimental
data, that is, linear regression analysis, correlation
analysis, residual analysis, and, in the last Work-
Book 12, analysis of variance for completely ran-
domized and block designs.
( 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
The guidebook attached to the QUERCUS soft-
ware consists of chapters corresponding to the
collection of computer laboratory sessions. How-
ever, after each sequence of workbooks there is
a summary chapter referring to the specific real
data. The last chapter gives some instructions how
to prepare concise reports summing up a statistical
investigation of experimental material. It contains
also eight different projects, which can be used by
students to improve their report writing tech-
niques.
The QUERCUS course is well organized and very
attractive. This compliment is justified by various
illustrative simulations and animations showing
the sense of the statistical concepts, by simple and
interesting games used as generators of real data
sets, and also from worked examples and exercises
taken directly from medical and biological experi-
mental practice.
RADOS|AW KALA
Department of Mathematical
and Statistical Methods
Agriculture University of Poznań
ul. Wojska Polskiego 28
60-637 Poznań
Poland
Statist. Med. 17, 2415—2420 (1998)