BIOMEDICAL STATISTICAL STUDY

OVERVIEW OF BIOMEDICAL STATISTICS

Biostatistics

     Statistics is the science of collecting, describing and analyzing of data that is subjected to random variation. The descriptive statistics presents and summarizes collected data to characterize features of its distribution. Inferential statistics presents sample data in order to estimate or predict characteristics of the larger population from which the sample is drawn. It refers to the subject of scientific activity which deals with the theories and methods of collection, analysis and interpretation of such data.

      Biostatistics is the term used when tools of statistics are applied to the data that is derived from biological sciences. Biostatistics begins with descriptive statistics. This implies summarizing a data series from a sample or population.   

      Data which are values of a variable constitutes the raw material for statistical work. Their are mainly two types of data applied in this study. One is Categorical data and another one is numerical data.Qualitative data are best summarized by grouping the observations into categories and counting the numbers in each, they are known as categorical data. The second one, quantitative data always have the values expressed as numbers and the difference between values have numerical meaning, they are also referred to as numerical data.

     

There are some application and uses of Biostatistics given below: 

• To compare the efficacy of a particular drug.
• To find out an association between two attributes such as cancer and smoking.
• To identify signs and symptoms of a disease or syndrome. E.g.- cough & typhoid is found by chance and fever is found in almost every case.
• To test usefulness of sera and vaccines in the field-the percentage of attacks or deaths among the vaccinated subjects is compared with that among the unvaccinated ones to find whether the difference observed is statistically significant.