Biostatistics is the application of statistics to biology. It is frequently associated with applications to medicine and to agriculture. The terms biostatistics and
biometry are sometimes used interchangeably, although biometry tends to connote a biological or agricultural, rather than a medical, application. (Note that there there is a more recent meaning of biometrics.)Because research questions and data sets in biology and medicine are diverse, biostatistics has a broad meaning. TOCleft
Applications - Biostatistics can refer to different applied mathematics and quantitative models in several different areas of application.Design and analysis of clinical trials is perhaps the most publicly visible application of statistics in medicine. Statistical genetics in populations is another applied area that is closely allied to biostatistics. This analysis attempts to link variation in genotype with a variation in phenotype. This has been used in agriculture to improve crops and farm animals. In biomedical research, this work can assist in finding candidates for gene alleles that can cause or influence predisposition to disease in human genetics. Ecology, biological sequence analysis, and epidemiology are among other diverse fields that have built upon strong biostatistical components. Statistical methods are beginning to be integrated into medical informatics and bioinformatics.
History of Biostatistics and Biological Thought - Biostatisical reasoning and modeling were also critical in formation of foundational theories of biology. After the 1900's and the rediscovery of Mendel's work there were conceptual gaps in understanding between genetics and evolutionary Darwinism. These gaps lead to several vigorous debates, including a struggle between the biometricians (e.g. Walter Frank Raphael Weldon and Karl Pearson, and the Mendelists (e.g. Charles Benedict Davenport and William Bateson. Statisticians and models that exploited statistical reasoning helped bridge this gap. Work at the intersection of genetics, evolution, and populations lead to a foundational advance in the history of biological thought, called the Neo-Darwinian Modern evolutionary synthesis. The prominent role that statistics played in this synthesis is shown by the fact that Sir Ronald Fisher was one of the major founders of this synthesis. Sir Ronald developed several basic statistical methods. However, he also wrote foundational and widely influential work in biology, such as The Genetical Theory of Natural Selection. Sewall G. Wright, a co-founder of this synthesis also used statistics in the development of modern population genetics. The mathematical biologist, J. B. S. Haldane is often credited as the third major founder of this synthesis. These individuals and the work of other biostaticians, mathematical biologists, and statistically inclined geneticists helped bring together evolutionary biology and genetics into a consistent, coherent whole that could begin to be quantitatively modeled.
Education and Training Programs - Educational programs in biostatistics are almost exclusively post-baccalaureate (i.e., found in graduate schools). They are most often found in schools of public health, affiliated with schools of medicine, forestry, or agriculture or as a focus of application in departments of statistics. In the United States,
asph.org - several universities have dedicated biostatistics departments; many other top-tier universities integrate Biostatistics faculty into Statistics (or other) departments.Many universities that deal with ecological research have a biostatistics course that introduces concepts such as hypothesis testing for univariate and sometimes multivariate data sets with one, two, or more samples. Often this is combined or followed with some kind of experimental design course.
Related Fields - Biostatistics draws quantitative methods from fields such as:
statistics,operations research,economics, and, generally,mathematicsand it is applied to research questions in fields such as:public health, which includes epidemiology, nutrition and environmental health,genomics and population genetics,medicine,ecology,agriculture.
See also - !List_of_publications_in_medici ne#Biostatistics Important publications in biostatistics
External links - tibs.org - The International Biometric !SocietyCategory:Statistics biostat.org - Biostat.org: a source of information on biostatistics, including a list of training !programsCategory:Statisticsde: Biostatistikes:Bioestadística he:ביומטריהsv:Biostati stikzh:生物统 ;计学pt:Biometria< /text>