Biostatistics is the discipline concerned with the design and analysis of data from biomedical studies. It comprises a set of principles and methods for generating and using quantitative evidence to address scientific questions, for estimating unknown quantities, and for quantifying the uncertainty in our estimates.
For example, suppose we want to know the average medical expenditures for US women. Biostatistics provides methods for designing a survey to estimate this quantity, for estimating the average expenditure in the population from the sample data, and for determining how far our estimate is likely to be from the true unknown value.
In humble terms, biostatistics is the search for truth (or at least true characteristics of populations). And as Keats once wrote: ‘Beauty is truth, truth beauty, – that is all ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.’ Hence, biostatistics is the search for truth and beauty.
The science of biostatistics includes designing of biological, experimental study designs as well as synthesis, analysis, and interpretation of data obtained from them. Biostatistics is a broad discipline involving the application of theories in statistics to the real-world problems in health and disease. It incorporates the practice of designing and conducting biomedical experiments, clinical trials, and the development of related computational algorithms. Thus, biostatistics is an integral part of epidemiological research, development of health policies, health economics, public health administration, evidence-based practice in clinical medicine, genomics, proteomics, and pharmaceutical product development
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