Books on statistical methods largely fall into two categories: elementary books that describe statistical techniques and mathematically advanced texts that describe the theory underling these techniques. This text is about the art and science of applying statistical methods to the analysis of collected data and provides an answer to the question, after a first course in statistics, What next? Like most toolboxes, the statistical tools in the text are loosely organized into sections of similar objectives. Unlike most toolboxes, these tools are accompanied by complete instructions, explanations, detailed examples, and advice on relevant issues and potential pitfalls. Thus, the text is a sophisticated introduction to statistical analysis and a necessary text for master's and Ph.D. students in epidemiology programs as well as others whose research requires the analysis of data.

The text employs a pattern of describing sampled data and providing examples followed by a discussion of the appropriate analytic strategies. This approach introduces the reader to data and analytic issues and then explores the logic and statistical details. A large number of examples and illustrations are included to appeal to a diverse audience. It is often the case that examples produce substantial insight into the problem in hand. Most statistical texts reverse this approach and describe the statistical method first followed by examples.

The level of this text is beyond introductory but far short of advanced.

Fundamental topics, such as the median values, simple linear regression methods, correlation coefficients, and confidence intervals found in most introductory books are not repeated but frequently reinforced. The explanations, illustrations, and examples require little or no mathematics to completely understand the presented material. Nevertheless, simple mathematical notation and arguments are included because they are unambiguous, and frequently their clarity leads to better understanding.

The complexity of the mathematics that supports the discussion of the statistical tools is no more than high school algebra. Mostly the symbols and notation from mathematics are used to describe the various approaches to data analysis. An exception is the last chapter, which is intended to enrich the applied nature of the text with a bit of statistical theory.

The choices of the statistical tools included in the text are largely based on two criteria: the usefulness in the analysis of data from human populations as well as a variety of other methods because they simply demonstrate general statistical data analysis strategies.