The backbone of medical decision making is prediction. Statistical prediction models can help in medical decision making. This book takes the viewpoint of the single patient and asks what does it mean that a risk prediction model performs well for a single individual?

Thomas A. Gerds is professor at the biostatistics unit at the University of Copenhagen. He is affiliated with the Danish Heart Foundation. He is author of several R-packages on CRAN and has taught statistics courses to non-statisticians for many years.

Michael Kattan is a highly cited author and Chair of the Department of Quantitative Health Sciences at Cleveland Clinic. He is a Fellow of the American Statistical Association and has received two awards from the Society for Medical Decision Making: the Eugene L. Saenger Award for Distinguished Service, and the John M. Eisenberg Award for Practical Application of Medical Decision Making Research.

1. Software. 2. I am going to make a prediction model. What do I need to know? 3. Regression model. 4. How should I prepare for modeling? 5. I am ready to build a prediction model. 7. Does my model predict accurately? 7. How do I decide between rival models? 8. Can't the computer just take care of all of this? 9. Things you might have expected in our book.