Math 263 (sect 004) - Prof. Kennedy - Fall '15

Course overview and objectives

Statistics is the field of study involving (1) the collection, summarization, and analysis of data; and (2) the drawing of inferences about a population from the examination of a sample of the population.

Biostatistics is the application of statistics to biological and medical questions. Biostatistics uses much the same core sets of concepts and principles as does applied statistics in general. The substance-matter knowledge that the biostatistician must learn in order to be successful is biomedical. Biostatistics underlies the process of medical research, playing a key role in each step of scientific inquiry from the research bench to the hospital bedside to the community. Biostatistics is concerned with the development and proper application of methods for study design, data measurement, data generation, and data analysis, these latter methods being used to help understand biomedical data by quantifying variation and/or separating signal from noise.  An intellectually stimulating feature of biostatistics is that its fundamental elements of data and variation are ubiquitous, being found in the areas of cell regulation, gene expression, genetic susceptibility, pharmacokinetics, response to therapy, assessment of medical treatments and new technology, adherence to guidelines, and program evaluation1

Importance of learning Biostatistics Biostatisticians are in great demand in academia, industry, and government. The responsibilities of biostatisticians span the entire scientific process.  They assist in the design and interpretation of studies, and usually have primary responsibility for implementing protocols for data management, data analysis, and quality assurance.  More generally, the increasingly complex, interdisciplinary, and data-intensive nature of medical research has caused, and will continue to cause, the demand for persons trained in biostatistics to increase. The supply of biostatisticians is currently inadequate, and is not rising quickly enough to keep pace with demand. The imbalance between supply and demand is particularly acute for outstanding biostatisticians that combine excellent quantitative training with the communication skills necessary to succeed in the medical environment2.

Objectives of this course The goals of this course are to introduce each student to the practice of statistics and to prepare each student for future work in statistics. More specifically each student should be able to understand the data utilized and summarized with statistics in the research literatures of the respective field of study. In addition, they should be able to understand statistics reported in popular media so that they could obtain useful information provided by good data.

Introduction to Statistics and Biostatistics provides an introduction to selected important topics in statistical concepts and reasoning. Specific topics include tools for describing central tendency and variability in data; methods for performing inference on population means and proportions via sample data; statistical hypothesis testing and its application to group comparisons; issues of sample size in study designs; and random sample and other study types. While there are some formulae and computational elements to the course, the emphasis is on interpretation and concepts.

Upon completion of the course, students should be able to: