2 – Introduction

Why biostatistics, not “biometry”?

Chapter 1 – Getting started, we presented a brief introduction to statistical thinking, a systematic approach to how we ask questions about the world from data. The chief learning objective of this eBook, then, is to provide the reader with a framework and practical computing skills needed for statistical reasoning in the biological sciences. Chapter 1 – Getting started also offered a justification for why undergraduate biology students should (are required) learn (bio)statistics. In my day, most of us took statistics as part of our graduate training. The curriculum for science students has accelerated now — it is now assumed that as part of undergraduate career students gain experience working with data and developing quantitative reasoning skills. Biostatistics courses are designed to help you achieve this understanding. We expand on that point in Ch2.1 – Why biostatistics?.

Note 1: I took a business statistics class as an undergraduate student at the University of Washington in the early 1980s.  The textbook was the 6th edition of John E. Freund‘s Modern Elementary Statistics. Biostatistics course was not an option for a biology undergraduate student at the time. During my first year of graduate school at the University of Wisconsin, textbooks were the 2nd edition of Biometry by Robert R. Sokal and F. James Rohlf) and the 8th edition of Statistical Methods by G.W. Snedecor and W.G. Cochran.

Biostatistics generally refers to the application of statistical methods to biological research in the context of medicine and public health. The emphasis of biostatistics is on experimental design and hypothesis testing in clinical and epidemiological contexts. The term biostatistics first appears in the literature in the 1940s (Pubmed). On the other hand, biometry, sensu the title of Sokal and Rohlf‘s legendary textbook, is a broader term, associated with the application of mathematical and statistical techniques to biological problems, especially in fields like ecology, genetics, and evolution. Our eBook provides real world problems as examples from across the biological field, including agriculture, ecology, evolution, genetics as well as health topics, thus the subject of this text is more in line with the spirit of biometry. However, I titled the book “Mike’s Biostatistics Book,” not “Mike’s Biometry Book,” because the term biometry is now conflated with biometrics (Oxford English Dictionary), which refers to the technology used to identify individuals based on biological characteristics. 

Chapter 2 begins my sales pitch: Why biostatistics? We’ll also provide a selective history of biostatistics and how statistical thinking informs the design of experiments. Chapter 2 concludes with how statistical reasoning fits in the scientific method — the systematic approach to acquiring knowledge through observation, experimentation, and reasoning (Chapter 2.5) — and introduces project-based learning approaches used in the biostatistics course at Chaminade University.

Quizzes in this chapter

A total of 50 questions among the several subchapters, a mix of true or false and multiple choice question format.

Homework to go with this topic.

Homework 1: Project data life cycle in Mike’s Workbook for Biostatistics.

Chapter 2 contents