Principles of Scientific Methods

Principles of Scientific Methods focuses on the fundamental principles behind scientific methods. The book refers to "science" in a broad sense, including natural science, physics, mathematics, statistics, social science, political science, and engineering science. A principle is often abstract and has broad applicability while a method is usually concrete and specific. The author uses many concrete examples to explain principles and presents analogies to connect different methods or problems to arrive at a general principle or a common notion. He mainly discusses a particular method to address the great idea behind the method, not the method itself.

The book shows how the principles are not only applicable to scientific research but also to our daily lives. The author explains how scientific methods are used for understanding how and why things happen, making predictions, and learning how to prevent mistakes and solve problems. Studying the principles of scientific methods is to think about thinking and to enlighten our understanding of scientific research.

Scientific principles are the foundation of scientific methods. In this book, you‘ll see how the principles reveal the big ideas behind our scientific discoveries and reflect the fundamental beliefs and wisdoms of scientists. The principles make the scientific methods coherent and constitute the source of creativity.

Mark Chang is vice president of biometrics at AMAG Pharmaceuticals and an adjunct professor at Boston University. Dr. Chang is an elected fellow of the American Statistical Association and a co-founder of the International Society for Biopharmaceutical Statistics. He serves on the editorial boards of statistical journals and has published seven books in biostatistics and science, including Paradoxes in Scientific Inference, Modern Issues and Methods in Biostatistics, Adaptive Design Theory and Implementation Using SAS and R, and Monte Carlo Simulation for the Pharmaceutical Industry.