Foundations of biostatistics

Abstract

This book offers a comprehensive guide to essential techniques and methods in biostatistics, addressing the underlying concepts to aid in comprehension. The use of biostatistics techniques has increased manifold in the recent past, due to their suitability for applications in a wide range of problems in various fields. This book helps learners grasp the materials in detail, equipping them to use biostatistics techniques independently and confidently. The book starts with a summary of background materials, followed by methods and techniques. As such, with only minimum guidance from teachers, this book can provide materials for self-learning of biostatistics techniques with a deeper level of understanding. The first two chapters focus on fundamental concepts, sources of data, data types, organization of data, and descriptive statistics, followed by the basic probability concepts, distributions and sampling distributions needed in order to combine descriptive statistics with inferential techniques. Estimation and tests of hypotheses are illustrated in two separate chapters. Important measures of association, linear regression, analysis of variance and logistic regression, and proportional hazards models are then presented systematically, ensuring that the book covers the topics most essential to students and users of biostatistics in connection with a wide range of applications in various fields. The book has been carefully structured, and the content is presented in a sequence covering the essential background in a highly systematic manner, supporting the learning process by presenting theory and applications that complement one another.