{"id":12,"date":"2015-04-28T10:35:56","date_gmt":"2015-04-28T09:35:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/pcool.dyndns.org:8080\/statsbook\/?page_id=8"},"modified":"2025-06-17T17:10:17","modified_gmt":"2025-06-17T16:10:17","slug":"introduction","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/pcool.dyndns.org\/index.php\/introduction\/","title":{"rendered":"Introduction"},"content":{"rendered":"

Since 2004, Paul Cool\u2019s books ‘Statistics for FRCS(Orth)’ and ‘Medical Statistics’1<\/a><\/sup>2<\/a><\/sup> as well as courses run at the Institute of Orthopaedics<\/a> at the Robert Jones and Agnes Hunt Orthopaedic Hospital NHS Foundation Trust<\/a> in Oswestry3<\/a><\/sup>, have helped trainees across the disciplines understand statistical methods and tests.\u00a0 ‘R applied to Medical Statistics’4<\/a><\/sup> followed in 2010\u00a0 as a compendium to ‘Medical Statistics’5<\/a><\/sup> and a practical guide to the analysis of large data sets.<\/p>\n

In 2011, both books became available as e-books on Kindle6<\/a><\/sup>7<\/a><\/sup>:<\/p>\n

Medical Statistics<\/a><\/p>\n

R Applied to Medical Statistics<\/a><\/p>\n

This web book8<\/a><\/sup>, is intended to be the next logical step. The book is available free of charge in a format that allows us to respond to changes in software packages and libraries; keeping the book up to date.<\/p>\n

We have used the same examples used in \u2018Medical Statistics\u2019 with additional, larger, example data sets available for download<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Statistical Software \u2013 the way it was<\/strong><\/p>\n

Whilst we appreciate the benefits of computer based analysis, we dislike the use of expensive proprietary software.\u00a0 These packages are \u2018black boxes\u2019 into which data is entered and from which come graphs and figures without any explanation as to how they have been derived.\u00a0 The algorithms are concealed within software which is closed to the outside world.\u00a0 It is taken on trust, therefore, that the software engineers have done their job perfectly despite a lack of open scrutiny.<\/p>\n

The Open Source Revolution<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u2018Open source\u2019, is a term used for software which is developed co-operatively by a community of software engineers, both professional and amateur.
\nOpen source software will usually be available for many different platforms including\u00a0 Microsoft Windows, Apple Mac OSX and Linux (for example Ubuntu). This software is free to download, use and distribute (although certain legal caveats usually apply).\u00a0 Since open source programs publish their source code, you can really \u2018see\u2019 what is going on \u2018under the hood\u2019 and know how the program has transformed your data into graphs and p-values.<\/p>\n

Open Source Evolution<\/strong><\/p>\n

The open source statistical programming language \u2018R<\/a>\u2019, is an integrated suite of software facilities for data manipulation, calculation and graphical display. Whilst hugely powerful and the \u2018Industry Standard\u2019 for statistical analysis, the learning curve has historically been rather steep.<\/p>\n

Latterly, a number of Graphical (that is to say windows and icons \u2013 mouse driven) User Interfaces (GUIs) have been written to make these powerful tools available. The most popular GUI for R is RStudio<\/a>.<\/p>\n

We very much hope you enjoy this book and would appreciate a citation:<\/p>\n

Cool P, Ockendon M. Stats Book.<\/em> http:\/\/countcool.com<\/a> (date of access)<\/p>\n

Paul Cool & Matthew Ockendon
\nOswestry
\nApril 2015, June 2025<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Since 2004, Paul Cool\u2019s books ‘Statistics for FRCS(Orth)’ and ‘Medical Statistics’ as well as courses run at the Institute of Orthopaedics at the Robert Jones and Agnes Hunt Orthopaedic Hospital NHS Foundation Trust in Oswestry, have helped trainees across the disciplines understand statistical methods and tests.\u00a0 ‘R applied to Medical Statistics’ followed in 2010\u00a0 as […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":3,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-12","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pcool.dyndns.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/12","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pcool.dyndns.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pcool.dyndns.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pcool.dyndns.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pcool.dyndns.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/pcool.dyndns.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/12\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3912,"href":"https:\/\/pcool.dyndns.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/12\/revisions\/3912"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pcool.dyndns.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}