SciTech Book News Mar2004, Vol. 28 Issue 1, p14

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Altman (Harvard-MIT Data Center, Cambridge), Gill (political science, U.
of California, Davis) and McDonald (government and politics, Mason U.,
Fairfax, Virginia) address what they see as a serious deficiency in
statistical work in the social and behavioral sciences. *They offer
readers a practical guidebook to the numerical methods underlying computerized
statistical calculations specific to these fields.* The text introduces
readers to the basic principles of numerical computation, outlines the
optimization process, and provides specific tools to assess the
sensitivity of the subsequent results to problems with these data or
model. Assumes a year of statistics training, including maximum likelihood
estimation, modest matrix algebra, and some basic calculus, and
rudimentary programming knowledge in a statistical package or compiled
language.
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