Basic Concepts

Published

September 14, 2024

1 Definitions

  • Statistics is the branch of science that deals with the collection, summarization, analysis, and interpretation of data.

  • Biostatistics is the application of statistics to data collected from experiments in the field of biological sciences or medicine.

2 Population and Sample

2.1 Population

  • A population can be defined as the largest group of entities (people, animals, plants, etc.) that we are interested in studying or drawing conclusions about.

  • Population can be finite or infinite.

  • The units of a population are termed as observations.

2.2 Sample

  • A sample is a subset of the population.

  • It is used to draw conclusions about the population because collecting data from the entire population is often impractical, costly, and time-consuming, particularly when the population is extremely large.

2.3 Example

  • If we are interested in evaluating the effect of a new medication on lowering blood glucose levels in diabetic patients:

    • The population would be all diabetic patients, however, it is not feasible to collect data from all diabetic patients.

    • Therefore, we would collect data from a representative part of diabetic patients (sample).

    • The data collected from this sample can be used to draw conclusions about the effect of the medication on the entire population of diabetic patients.

3 Main areas of statistics

  • Descriptive statistics:

    • It is used to summarize and describe data collected from a sample or population.

    • It includes measures of central tendency (average), measures of dispersion (spread), and graphical representation of data.

  • Inferential statistics:

    • It is used to draw conclusions (i.e., make inferences) about a population based on data collected from a sample drawn from that population.

    • It includes hypothesis testing, confidence intervals, and other statistical methods.

4 References

  • Daniel, W. W. and Cross, C. L. (2013). Biostatistics: A Foundation for Analysis in the Health Sciences, Tenth edition. Wiley

  • Heumann, C., Schomaker, M., and Shalabh (2022). Introduction to Statistics and Data Analysis: With Exercises, Solutions and Applications in R. Springer

  • Lane, D. M. et al., (2019). Introduction to Statistics. Online Edition. Retrieved September 14, 2024, from https://openstax.org/details/introduction-statistics


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