Learn to:

• Understand key statistical concepts as they relate to biological sciences
• Interpret biological and statistical data in any setting
• Score your highest in your biostatistics course

Baffled by biostatistics?

Biostatisticians are charged with finding answers to some of the world's most pressing health questions: How safe or effective are drugs hitting the market today? What causes autism? What are the risk factors for cardiovascular disease? Covering the most relevant topics you'll encounter in a biostatistics course, Biostatistics For Dummies gives you plain-English explanations of important concepts and plenty of examples.

• Back to the basics get up to speed on math and statistics concepts, find advice on selecting statistical software, and get an overview of clinical research
• The deal with data find out how to collect data properly, summarize it concisely, display it in tables and graphs, and describe its qualities
• Size it up grasp the most common statistical techniques for comparing groups: t tests, ANOVAs, chi-square tests, and Fisher Exact tests
• Let's regress learn how to test for and quantify the relationship between two or more variables, from a simple straight-line regression to multiple, logistic, nonlinear, and other kinds of regression
• Survive and thrive see how to calculate survival curves, test for a difference in survival between two or more groups of subjects, and apply the methods of regression analysis to survival data

Open the book and find:

• Basic math and statistical formulas, concepts, and techniques you need to know
• The big picture of clinical research
• How to summarize and graph data
• The scoop on accuracy, precision, standard errors, and confidence intervals
• Ways to compare groups
• Common distribution functions
• Simple rules for sample-size calculations

John C. Pezzullo, PhD, has held faculty appointments in the departments of biomathematics and biostatistics, pharmacology, nursing, and internal medicine at Georgetown University. He is semi-retired and continues to teach biostatistics and clinical trial design online to Georgetown University students.