Doug Altman facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Doug Altman
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Professor Douglas Altman
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| Born | 12 July 1948 London, England
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| Died | 3 June 2018 (aged 69) |
| Alma mater | University of Bath |
| Known for | Medical statistics |
| Awards | Royal Statistical Society's Bradford Hill Medal (1997); BMJ Lifetime Achievement Award (2015) |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Statistician |
| Institutions | Centre for Statistics in Medicine, Cancer Research UK, University of Oxford |
Douglas Graham Altman (born July 12, 1948 – died June 3, 2018) was a famous English statistician. He was known for making medical research more accurate and easier to understand. He wrote many important papers about how to use statistics in medicine. Doug Altman was a professor at the University of Oxford. He also started the Centre for Statistics in Medicine and a group at Cancer Research UK. He helped create the EQUATOR Network, which works to make health research more reliable worldwide.
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Doug Altman's Career
Doug Altman finished his statistics degree in 1970 from the University of Bath. His first job was at St Thomas’s Hospital in London. After that, he worked for 11 years at the Medical Research Council (UK). There, he helped doctors with statistics for many different medical studies.
In 1988, Doug Altman became the head of a new group called the Medical Statistics Laboratory. This group was part of the Imperial Cancer Research Fund, which is now Cancer Research UK. In 1995, he also became the first director of the Centre for Statistics in Medicine (CSM) in Oxford. The University of Oxford made him a Professor of Statistics in Medicine in 1998.
He was also the main statistics advisor for the British Medical Journal. He helped guide how statistics were used in this important medical magazine.
Making Research Better
Doug Altman was a top expert on how to do and report health research correctly. He played a big part in setting higher standards for medical studies. He helped start the EQUATOR Network, which is an international group focused on making health research reliable.
He was also part of the CONSORT Group from 1999. This group helps researchers report their studies in a clear and standard way. He also helped create the IDEAL framework, which aims to improve surgical research.
Teaching Statistics
Doug Altman wrote many articles about how to teach statistics. He often worked with his friend Martin Bland. Their writings were very popular with doctors because they were clear and practical. His book, Practical Statistics for Medical Research, came out in 1991. It has sold over 50,000 copies.
Amazing Achievements
Doug Altman wrote more than 450 papers about statistical methods. Eleven of his papers have been used as references over 1,000 times by other researchers. One paper, published in The Lancet, has been cited over 23,000 times! It is ranked among the top 100 most-cited research papers ever.
In 1997, the Royal Statistical Society gave him the Bradford Hill Medal. This award was for his important work in medical statistics. He also received a special science degree (DSc) from the University of London in the same year.
In 2015, the BMJ gave Doug Altman a lifetime achievement award. The editor, Dr Fiona Godlee, said he did more than anyone else to encourage researchers to share all their findings, even the not-so-perfect ones.
Doug Altman was also the editor-in-chief of the journal Trials. He was a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences and the Royal Statistical Society.
About His Life
Doug Altman was born in London on July 12, 1948. He passed away on June 3, 2018. He is remembered by his wife, Sue, and their children, Louise and Edmund.
Books He Wrote
- Practical Statistics for Medical Research (1991). Douglas G. Altman. ISBN: 978-1-58488-039-4
Books He Edited
- Systematic Reviews in Healthcare: Meta-Analysis in Context (2001). Editors: Douglas G. Altman, Iain Chalmers, Gerd Antes, Michael Bradburn, Mike Clarke, Matthias Egger, George Davey Smith. ISBN: 0-7279-1488-X
- Statistics With Confidence: Confidence Intervals and Statistical Guidelines (2000). Editors: Douglas G. Altman, David Machin, T. N. Bryant, Martin J. Gardner. ISBN: 0-7279-0222-9
- Systematic Reviews (1999). Editors: Douglas G. Altman, Iain Chalmers. ISBN: 0-7279-0904-5
- Statistics in Practice: Articles Published in the British Medical Journal. (1982). Editors: Sheila M. Gore, Douglas G. Altman. ISBN: 0-7279-0085-4
Important Articles He Wrote
You can find a list of over 800 articles by Doug Altman on PubMed.
- David M, Kenneth FS and Altman DG for the CONSORT Group. (2001) New ideas for making reports of medical trials better. Lancet 14, 1191–4.
- Bland JM, Altman DG. (1986) How to use statistics to compare two ways of measuring things in medicine. Lancet i, 307–310.
- BMJ Statistical Notes – A series of short articles about using statistics by Doug Altman and Martin Bland.
- Altman DG, Bland JM. (1983) Measurement in medicine – how to look at studies that compare different methods. The Statistician 32, 307–317.
- Bland JM, Altman DG. (1999) How to measure agreement in studies that compare methods. Statistical Methods in Medical Research 8, 135–160.
- Bland JM, Altman DG. (1995) Why comparing measurement methods by plotting differences can be misleading. Lancet 346, 1085–1087.
