How to learn biostatistics

Introduction

Biostatistics is the application of statistical principles to questions and problems in medicine, public health or biology.
One can imagine that it might be of interest to characterize a given population (e.g., adults in Boston or all children in the United States) with respect to the proportion of subjects who are overweight or the proportion who .

Learning Objectives

After completing this module, the student will be able to:.
1) Define and distinguish between populations and samples.
2) Define and distinguish between population parameters and sample statistics.
3) Compute a sample mean, sample variance, and sample standard deviation.
4) Compute a population mean, population variance, and population standard devi.

Population Parameters Versus Sample Statistics

As noted in the Introduction, a fundamental task of biostatistics is to analyze samples in order to make inferences about the population from which the samples were drawn.
To illustrate this, consider the population of Massachusetts in 2010, which consisted of 6,547,629 persons.
One characteristic (or variable) of potential interest might be the di.

What is a Biostatistics Course?