Primer of statistics in dental research: Part I

Statistics play essential roles in evidence-based dentistry (EBD) practice and research. It ranges widely from formulating scientific questions, designing studies, collecting and analyzing data to interpreting, reporting, and presenting study findings. Mastering statistical concepts appears to be an unreachable goal among many dental researchers in part due to statistical authorities' limitations of explaining statistical principles to health researchers without elaborating complex mathematical concepts. This series of 2 articles aim to introduce dental researchers to 9 essential topics in statistics to conduct EBD with intuitive examples. The part I of the series includes the first 5 topics (1) statistical graph, (2) how to deal with outliers, (3) p-value and confidence interval, (4) testing equivalence, and (5) multiplicity adjustment. Part II will follow to cover the remaining topics including (6) selecting the proper statistical tests, (7) repeated measures analysis, (8) epidemiological consideration for causal association, and (9) analysis of agreement.