Elementary Bayesian Biostatistics

With numerous exercises and a CD-ROM of data sets and computing code, this lucid introduction explores Bayesian principles and illustrates their application to healthcare research. It reviews the interesting and controversial history of the Bayesian concept and enables a balanced comparison of Bayesian tools with standard frequentist approaches. The book also discusses several important implementations of Bayesian procedures in clinical research, including sample size computations, adaptive randomization, and monitoring procedures. In addition, it shows how to evaluate a healthcare research scenario to determine whether a frequentist or Bayesian approach is most appropriate.