ABSTRACT
Empiricism in medicine requires observations for a group of subjects, and this gives rise to data. When data on, say, 200 patients with duodenal ulcers are available, how does one make sense out of them? One possibility is a graphical representation of the data. This is discussed in Chapter 8. More commonly, a numerical summarization is done. Two initial steps for this are as follows: (a) Make a summary of the data in such a manner that none of their important features is lost. (b) Calculate a few summary values that can adequately represent location and scatteredness in the data. Does the representation in the literature really give you the right picture of their data? The methods discussed in this chapter may provide you the answer. The basic principle is that the data should be presented in ways that are not just intuitive and correctly perceived, but also maximize the information content for the reader.
