Applied Biostatistics

Dr. Ruth Peters & Dr. Sarju S. Rai

ATHENA INSTITUTE

KEY CONCEPTS
Topics we will cover

• Independent and dependent variables

• Correlation and causality
• Study population and sample
• Sampling error
• Random/stratified probability sampling
• Difference between descriptive and inferential statistics
• Null-hypothesis and alternate hypothesis
• Types of data
• Distributions and shapes
It all starts with:

Reference: Gray ‘Doing

Research in the real
world’ chapter 1
 Independent and dependent variables

Independent variables are what we expect will influence

dependent variables.

Examples:
New performance-related pay system → output /
number of patients treated
Amount of stress → job satisfaction
Duration of symptoms → quality of life
Medical procedure → cured (yes/no)

But, relationships between variables may be ones of

association, but this does not necessarily imply causality
Population vs Sample

A population is the entire group/ the total number of

units that you want to draw conclusions about.

Two important sampling techniques:

- Random probability sampling
- Stratefied random sampling
Types of statistics

Descriptive statistics Inferential statistics

• Summarize the data • Draw conclusions about

of the sample the population
• Identify patterns • Distinguish true
• Generate differences from random
hypothesis variation
• Allows for hypothesis
testing
Hypothesis

• H0 Every statistical test begins with a null-hypothesis

• No difference between the groups
• Both samples/groups come from same underlying population

• HA The test assesses the possibility of an alternate hypothesis

• There is a difference between the groups
• Samples come from different underlying populations
Types of data

Meaningful Examples:
difference Income
between values,
true zero Age
Ratio

Meaningful
Numerical difference Example:
between values, IQ score
Interval
no true zero

Variable

Ordered Example:
Ordinal categories Education level
(ranking)
Categorical

Examples:
Nominal Named Gender
categories Ethnicity
with no
order Religion
 Distributions

A distributions is an arrangement of values of a variable

showing their frequency of occurrence