BIOE: INTRODUCTION TO BIOSTATISTICS Flashcards
• field of study concerned with
(1) the collection, organization, and analysis of data
(2) the drawing of inferences about a body of data when only a part of the data is
observed
Statistics
• tools of statistics when data analyzed are derived from the biological sciences and
medicine
Biostatistics
• science of summarizing data so that non-statistician can understand it
• can be used as a tool in decision-making
Biostatistics
• raw material of statistics
Data
Data sources:
• records of day-to-day transactions of its activities
• ex. hospital records & hospital accounting records
Routinely kept records
data sources:
• ex. administrator of a clinic wishes to obtain information regarding the mode of
transportation used by patients to visit the clinic
Surveys
Data sources:
• ex. nurse may wish to know which of several strategies is best for maximizing
patient compliance
Experiments
Data sources:
data needed to answer a question may already exist in the form of published
reports, commercially available data banks, or the research literature
External sources
Data types:
• firsthand data gathered by the researcher
Primary
Data types:
• data collected by someone else
Secondary
• characteristic that takes on different values in different persons, places, or things
Variable
• characteristics are not capable of being measured
Qualitative variables
• value of a characteristic that remains the same from person to person, from time
to time or from place to place
Constant variable
characteristics takes on different values
Random variable
TYPES OF QUANTITATIVE VARIABLE
• can assume a finite or ____________
number of values
• characterized by gaps or interruptions in the values that it can assume
Discrete
TYPES OF QUANTITATIVE VARIABLE
• can assume an____________ or other possible values
• does not possess the gaps or interruptions
Continuous
• largest collection of entities for which we have an interest at a particular time
• value is denoted by ____
Population
• part of a population
• value is denoted by ____
Sample
• measure of a characteristic of a population
Parameter
SCALE OF MEASUREMENT OF VARIABLES
• simply used as names or identifiers of a category
• always ____________
• does not represent any amount or quantity
Nominal
SCALE OF MEASUREMENT OF VARIABLES
• represents an ____________ series of relationships
• may be qualitative or quantitative
Ordinal
SCALE OF MEASUREMENT OF VARIABLES
• does not have a true-zero value or starting point
Interval
SCALE OF MEASUREMENT OF VARIABLES
• modified interval level which includes zero as a starting point
Ratio
BRANCH OF STATISTICS
• methods of summarizing and presenting data
• computation of measures of central tendency and variability
• tabulation and graphical presentation
• facilitate understanding, analysis, and interpretation of data
Descriptive Statistics