Origin Of Living Things Flashcards
Chapter 1
What is biostatistics?
The application of statistical principles to questions and problems in medicine, public health, or biology.
What is the purpose of biostatistics?
To analyze samples to make inferences about the population from which the samples were drawn.
Define “population” in biostatistics.
A large group of individuals about which inferences are made regarding a research problem.
What is a sample?
A subset of a population used to make inferences about the entire population.
Differentiate between independent and dependent variables.
The independent variable is altered by the experimenter, causing changes in the dependent variable.
What is a parameter?
A descriptive measure associated with a variable over an entire population, e.g., the mean height of green turtles.
What is a “statistic” in biostatistics?
A descriptive measure associated with a random variable of a sample.
Name the three types of data in biostatistics
Quantitative data, ranked (ordinal) variables, and categorical data.
What are continuous variables?
Quantitative data that can assume any value, e.g., height, weight, and temperature.
What are discrete variables?
Quantitative data with isolated values, e.g., trees per hectare, arms per sea star.
Define ranked (ordinal) variables.
Data with a natural order but not measured, e.g., students ranked by height.
What is categorical data?
Qualitative data such as species, gender, and marital status.
What is the mean?
The center of a population or sample, calculated as the sum of all values divided by the total number.
What is the median?
The middle value in an ordered list of observations.
Define mode.
The most frequently occurring value in a data set.
Which measure of central tendency is the most informative for quantitative variables?
The mean.
What is central tendacny?
A statistical measure that identifies a single value as representative of an entire dataset.
It describes the center or typical value of the data distribution
