BIOSTATISTICS. A foundation for Analysis in the Health Sciences, eights
WIE ISBN: 0-471-45232-7
 “Elementary Statistics” by Robert Johnson, 3
11th Expanded Ed.,
is a science that deals with collection, organization, summarization,
interpretation, and presentation of related pieces of numerical information called
We may also treat statistics as the
science of learning from data
. The field of
statistics can be roughly subdivided into two areas:
. Descriptive statistics
deals with procedures that used to organize, summarize,
and present data in a convenient, useable, and communicable form.
allows us to obtain broader generalizations or inferences from the data.
is defined as a
(or verbal characteristics)
collected as a
result of statistical activity
(which may include counting, and/or also observations,
measurements, experiments, questioning, etc.)
These numbers contain information
about the objects on which they have been collected, and the purpose of statistics is
to investigate and evaluate the nature and meaning of this information.
Careful use of statistical methods enables us to
the findings of statistical activity (scientific research);
body of data based on observations
part of the total
make a statement about the chance
inferences and estimations are true (
the theory of probability provides the
foundation for statistical inference
on the basis of the inferences and estimations.
Probability and statistics are two separate but related fields of mathematics
allows scientists to discover hidden dependencies and correlation (correspondence,
relation) between the events and phenomena that may seem independent for the
The tools and concepts of statistics are
, and they are widely used in many
fields, for example, in biological sciences and medicine, in business & economics (Dow-
Johns and Nasdaq indices, rate of inflation…), agriculture, education, physical sciences,
engineering, psychology, linguistics, etc. Statistics is essential for the proper work of
government, and it is central to decision making in industry.