Designed for the busy health care professional who needs to collect, analyze, and/or evaluate data, this readily accessible work explains the fundamental concepts, uses, and misuses of statistics. Without jargon or mathematical formulas, the author introduces the practice of quantitative analysis to provide an understanding of the principles of scientific inquiry, applied to clinical medicine, program evaluation, policy analysis, management, accounting, and research. The book discusses practical scientific methods to show why statistics cannot compensate for bad science or bad data.