Elements of vital statistics

This book is intended to assist medical officers of health, administrators of welfare services of all kinds and other social and public health workers, whose decisions depend upon statistical indices, to understand the purpose, derivation and meaning of the vital statistics they use. Although a new work, this textbook follows the the long-tested and well-established approach of the book by 'Arthur Newsholme which it replaces; that is, it teaches by presenting statistics as they are encountered in practice, against the background of the day-to-day problems to which they relate. An attempt has been made to cover most fields of medical and social experience where the community itself rather than the individual person provides the object of laboratory investigation.

No knowledge of mathematics or statistical theory is assumed or provided. The form of presen tation is designed both to interest those who seek to understand vital statistics without being concerned as practitioners, and to stimulate those who are practitioners to undertake more advanced studies. The book is intended to supplement rather than compete with existing works on medical statistics statistical theory, of which there are many. Special attention has been paid to practice in the United States of America and also to considerations of international comparability. A very full bibliography on special aspects has been provided wherever necessary.