Book Review: Discrete Distributions. Applications in the Health Sciences. Wiley Series in Probability and Statistics. By D. Zelterman

✍ Scribed by Dietrich Stoyan

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 2007
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 30 KB
• Volume: 49
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0323-3847
• DOI: 10.1002/bimj.200710346

✦ Synopsis

The author known for his excellent work on statistics for discrete data presents various probability models which lead to interesting discrete distributions, which are very useful for the health sciences. These models are natural generalizations of classical models in probability theory leading to binomial, hypergeometric and negative binomial distributions. An example is the minimum negative binomial distribution, which describes the number of trials until c successes and c failures.

These models are considered in detail, formulas (and proofs) and software for the calculation of their characteristics are given, and statistical methods are presented and discussed. All is illustrated very well by examples from the health sciences, in particular medical screening, disease clustering and joint life span analysis.

This well-written book is surely of great value for the applications the author has in mind. But additionally, persons teaching the fundamentals of probability may find it interesting to learn that there are plausible models close to the simple classical models which merit attention.