Dicing with Death: Chance, risk and health by Stephen Senn, Cambridge University Press, £14.95, ISBN 0521540232 Reviewed by Robert Matthews
IT offers insights of literally life- or-death importance, techniques for predicting the future, profound philosophical debates – and the means to make a few bob on the horses. Yet mention statistics to most people, says Stephen Senn, professor of statistics at the University of Glasgow, UK, and you will conjure up images of the tonnage of coal mined in Silesia in 1963.
Senn argues that part of the trouble lies in the name. Statistics as data is often boring, but not…
