Common Statistical Methods for Clinical Research with SAS Examples, Third Edition, 3rd Edition

PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION

Aristotle, one of mankind's greatest thinkers, rooted his basis of human understanding in the notion that universal phenomena can be explained through perception and rationalization. As such, Aristotle conjectured that a 10-pound object should fall through the air 10 times faster than a similar 1-pound object. This, and other intuitive suppositions of his based on logic, did not stand up to the scientific method.

We now know that understanding natural phenomena requires more than observation and reasoning. Nearly every behavior that exists is subject to variation and fluctuation due to a vast array of influencing forces, many unknown or unrecognized. This variation is further compounded by less than perfect human perception, ...