Statistics

This first article covers the basic principles of statistics in medicine. Topics covered include types of data, descriptive statistics (mean, median, mode, percentiles), the normal distribution, confidence intervals and the standard error of the mean, hypothesis testing and the choice of statistical tests, type 1 and 2 errors, contingency tables, correlation and regression, and meta-analysis. The second article will cover the application of statistics to clinical trials. The topics that will be covered include the basic types of study design, bias, power analysis, guides to good clinical practice, the presentation of results and number needed to treat.