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 .
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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.
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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.
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Population Parameters
The previous page outlined the sample statistics for diastolic blood pressure measurement in our sample.
If we had diastolic blood pressure measurements for all subjects in the population, we could also calculate the population parameters as follows:
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What is biostatistics in biology?
Biostatistics (also known as biometry) is a branch of statistics that applies statistical methods to a wide range of topics in biology.
It encompasses the design of biological experiments, the collection and analysis of data from those experiments and the interpretation of the results.
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Why do we analyze samples in biostatistics?
If the samples one takes are representative of the population of interest, they will provide good estimates regarding the population overall.
Consequently, in biostatistics one analyzes samples in order to make inferences about the population.
This module introduces fundamental concepts and definitions for biostatistics.
