Basic Statistical Techniques for Medical and Other Professionals

Book excerpt: We are bombarded with statistical data each and every day, and healthcare professionals are no exception. All sectors of healthcare rely on data provided by insurance companies, consultants, research firms, and government to help them make a host of decisions regarding the delivery of medical services. But while these health professionals rely on data, do they really make the best use of the information? Not if they fail to understand whether the assumptions behind the formulas generating the numbers make sense. Not if they don’t understand that the world of healthcare is flooded with inaccurate, misleading, and even dangerous statistics. The purpose of this book is to provide members of medical and other professions, including scientists and engineers, with a basic understanding of statistics and probability together with an explanation and worked examples of the techniques. It does not seek to confuse the reader with in-depth mathematics but provides basic methods for interpreting data and making inferences. The worked examples are medically based, but the principles apply to the analysis of any numerical data.