Читать книгу Practical Statistics for Nursing and Health Care - Jim Fowler - Страница 10
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Foreword to Students
It is possible that you have recently enrolled on a nursing, midwifery or other health care course. It is likely that you did so with high ideals and a motivation to help humankind in the relief of suffering. It is also possible that you did not enjoy handling ‘numbers’ at school, and you have sought to escape from them. And now you have in your hands a textbook that might, at first sight, look terrifying.
We wish to offer a word of reassurance. Modern health care is a ‘science’, and as such, involvement with numbers is inescapable. It was, after all, Florence Nightingale herself who recognized the importance of maintaining accurate numerical records. However, it might not be as bad as you fear. This book seeks to guide you through the subject ‘from scratch’, and we make no assumptions about your previous learning. The chapters develop in difficulty progressively through the book, and the material is extensively cross‐referenced. If you wish to ‘dip in’ to the text, you will find guidance on where to look back for under‐pinning explanations.
It is very unlikely that you will ever need to know all that is contained in this book. In the first instance, it may be simply a supporting text to help you through a statistical element of your course. Later, you may be involved in a project of some kind, when this book can help you plan correctly the gathering, presentation and analysis of your data. Some of you may then venture into an area of research, in which case the more advanced chapters in this book will give you a sound foundation in the quantitative techniques that are required.
We plead with you not to feel intimidated by the formulae that you see by flicking through these pages. How they are used is carefully described in each case. By persisting with the book from ‘square one’, reworking some of our own examples to make sure that you get the same answer, you will rapidly become sufficiently confident to apply them to your own data. And, who knows, you may even come to enjoy statistics!
