In preparing a new edition of a book, the editors are usually happy in the knowledge that the first edition has been a success. In the current circumstances, this satisfaction is tinged with deep personal regret that Martin Gardner, the originator of the idea for Statistics with Confidence, died in 1993 aged just 52. His achievements in a prematurely shortened career were outlined in his obituary in the BMJ.1
The first edition of Statistics with Confidence (1989) was essentially a collection of expository articles concerned with confidence intervals and statistical guidelines that had been published in the BMJ over the period 1986 to 1988. All were coauthored by Martin. The other contributors were Douglas Altman, Michael Campbell, Sheila Gore, David Machin, Julie Morris and Stuart Pocock. The whole book was translated into Italian2 and the statistical guidelines have also appeared in Spanish.3
As may be expected, several developments have occurred since the publication of the first edition and Martin had discussed and agreed some of the changes that we have now introduced into this new and expanded edition. Notably, this second edition includes new chapters on Diagnostic tests (chapter 10); Clinical trials and meta-analyses (chapter 11); Confidence intervals and sample sizes (chapter 12); and Special topics (substitution method, exact and mid-P confidence intervals, bootstrap confidence intervals, and multiple comparisons) (chapter 13). There is also a review of the impact of confidence intervals in the medical literature over the ten years or so since the first edition (chapter 2). All the chapters from the first edition have been revised, some extensively, and one (chapter 6 on proportions) has been completely rewritten. The list of contributors has been extended to include Leslie Daly and Robert Newcombe. We are grateful to readers of the first edition for constructive comments which have assisted us in preparing this revision.
Alongside the first edition of Statistics with Confidence, a computer program, Confidence Interval Analysis (CIA), was available. This program, which could carry out the calculations described in the book, had been written by Martin, his son Stephen Gardner and Paul Winter. An entirely new Windows version of CIA has been written by Trevor Bryant to accompany the book, and is packaged with this second edition. It is outlined in chapter 17. The program reflects the changes made for this edition of the book and has been influenced by suggestions from users.
Despite the enhanced coverage we would reiterate the comment in the introduction to the first edition, that this book is not intended as a comprehensive statistical textbook. For further details of statistical methods the reader is referred to other sources.4–7
We were all privileged to be colleagues of Martin Gardner. We hope that he would have approved of this new edition of Statistics with Confidence and would be pleased to know that he is still associated with it. In 1995 the Royal Statistical Society posthumously awarded Martin the inaugural Bradford Hill medal for his important contributions to medical statistics. The medal was accepted by his widow Linda. As we were completing this second edition in October 1999 we were greatly saddened to learn that Linda too had died from cancer, far too young. We dedicate this book to the memory of both Martin and Linda Gardner.
1 Obituary of MJ Gardner. BMJ 1993;306:387.
2 Gardner MJ, Altman DG (eds) Gli intervalli di confidenza. Oltre la significatività statistica. Rome: II Pensiero Scientifico Editore, 1990.
3 Altman DG, Gore SM, Gardner MJ, Pocock SJ. Normas estadisticas para los colaboradores de revistas de medicina. Archivos de Bronconeumologia 1988; 24:48–56.
4 Altman DG. Practical statistics for medical research. London: Chapman & Hall, 1991.
5 Armitage P, Berry G. Statistical methods in medical research. 3rd edn. Oxford: Blackwell Science, 1994.
6 Bland M. An introduction to medical statistics. 3rd edn. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000.
7 Campbell MJ, Machin D. Medical statistics. A commonsense approach. 3rd edn. Chichester: John Wiley, 1999.