STATISTICS IN MEDICINE, VOL. 12, 991-992 (1993)

BOOK REVIEWS Editor: Douglas Altman

1. Edward R. Tufte, Envisioning Information. 2. James H . Dwyer, Manning Feinleih, Peter Lippert and Hans Hoffmeister (Eds.), Statistical Models for Longitudinal Studies of Health.

I . ENVISIONING INFORMATION. Edward R Graphics Press, Cheshire, Connecticut, No. of pages: 126. Price: f30/$48. ISBN: 3921 1-8

Tufte, 1990.

0-96 1 -

Tufte's earlier book, The Visual Display ofQuantit- ative Information,' received stunning reviews (richly deserved) and has sold over 100,OOO copies. It is a terribly hard act to follow. Whereas the earlier book was largely devoted to statistical graphics, this successor considers design over a much wider spectrum.

Anyone coming to this book without having seen the earlier one would surely be impressed by the beautiful design and feel of the book, and fascinated by the content. However, after the first book I felt a little disappointment. Certainly this is another beautiful book, well worth reading, but it does not seem to break new ground in the manner of its predecessor. Indeed, some illustrative examples used in the first book recur here, notably train timetables (both tabular and graphic) and maps of various types. But perhaps I was also disappointed that this volume is much less relevant to the statistician than its predecessor, and that is probably an unfair criticism.

Of relevance to statisticians are the statistical maps from Japan, showing data for thousands of 1 km squares rather than for pre-defined areas of varying size (choropleth maps); Chapter 5 on 'Color and Information', in which computer soft- ware displays are too briefly criticized; discussion of the graphical display of multivariate data; and good advice on the layout of tables. Highlights include some beautiful pictorial explanations of

Pythagoras's theorem, and a stereopair of aerial photographs which, with perseverance, should give a three-dimensional image if viewed from the right distance (I failed).

The theme of this book is escaping flatland, whereby two-dimensional displays are of necessity used to depict multi-dimensional data. Tufte writes wisely and entertainingly on this theme, and the illustrations are always relevant and often illu- minating. The previous book' can be recommen- ded unreservedly; indeed, it might be regarded as essential reading. This further volume is a beautiful and enjoyable follow-up. It has much less relevance to statisticians, but statisticians who are interested in topics other than statistics (surely most statisticians) will find much to interest them.

DOUGLAS G. ALTMAN Medical Statistics Laboratory

Imperial Cancer Research Fund P.O. Box 123

Lincoln's Inn Fields London WCZA 3PX, U .K .

REFERENCE 1. Tufte, E. R. The Visual Display of Quantitative

Information, Graphics Press, Cheshire, Connec- ticut, 1983.

Both books are available directly from Graphics Press, Box 430, Cheshire, Connecticut 06410, U.S.A. or Graphics Press U.K., P.O. Box 8, Godal- ming, Surrey GU7 3HB, U.K.

0 1993 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

992 BOOK REVIEWS

2. STATISTICAL MOI)C..LS FOR LONGITIIDINAL STUD- IES OF HFALTH. James H. Dwyer, Manning Fein- leib, Peter Lippert, and Hans Hoffmeister (Eds.), Oxford University Press, New York, 1992. No. of pages: xi + 385. Price: fS0. ISBN: 0-19-505473-3

This book consists of an introduction followed by 14 chapters, each a contribution by different authors and including data analysis examples.

The long introductory chapter summarizes ma- terial in the later chapters and attempts to provide an overview of methods for handling longitudinal data. I t is somewhat fragmented, however, partly because there are no clear links between topics, such as might have been achieved through careful choice of a few substantive problems associated with interesting data sets. The following, much shorter, chapter on design issues is more successful and raises a number of practical problems of which anyone carrying out a longitudinal study needs to be aware.

The next chapter looks at differential equation models where the response variable is modelled as a function of time and other variables including previous values. This is followed by three chapters discussing unconditional ‘random effects’ or ‘two- level’ models, conditional models with serial cor- relation structures, and structural equation models involving latent variables. The third of these chap- ters presents a rather standard treatment and is not particularly concerned with the special prob- lems of longitudinal data.

The next three chapters are concerned with dis- crete response data. They discuss logistic and re- lated models, such as the proportional hazards

model, and various unconditional models for relat- ing event probabilities to time. These are followed by four chapters dealing with sample attrition effects, missing data, measurement errors and models for exposure histories. The final two chap- ters deal with carcinogenesis models and general models for handling measurement errors.

Although some of the chapters are accompanied by computer programs or algorithms, a serious weakness in many of the contributions is that there is no good description of what software is available for carrying out the analyses. In some cases, such as random effects models, there are several soft- ware packages available, which are not mentioned. In other cases, such as the chapter on structural equation models, there seems to be too much dis- cussion of the finer points of a subset of the avail- able software.

The high price suggests that this book will not find a place on many individual shelves. Neverthe- less, despite the reservations, the volume ought to be a useful reference work for medical statisticians. Many of the contributors have made substantial important contributions to the literature and their chapters provide clearly written accounts.

HARVEY GOLDSTEIN Depar tnient of Mathematics ~

Statistics und Computing Institute of‘ Education Uniilersity I$ London

20 B d j b r d Wuy London WCIH OAL. U . K .