The term Biostatistics is formed from the words biology and statistics, but these days more commonly refers to a somewhat narrower coverage of statistical methods needed in medicine and public health. In its broadest sense, biostatistics is the science of collecting and analyzing biological data to create knowledge about biological processes. The field of biostatistics (even as the term is generally used today) is wide and in its scope includes applications in clinical medicine, public health, epidemiology, genetics (genomics and all the other ’omics), health services, demography, and laboratory research. An essential part of the practice of biostatistics is collaboration between the statistician and the medical scientist or health professional.
To give some insight into the very many facets encompassed by biostatistics we use the five central principles of applied statistics (of which Biostatistics arguably can be regarded as the largest branch) proposed by Cox (2007).
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References and Further Reading
Cox DR (2007) Applied statistics: a review. Ann Appl Stat 1:1–16
Armitage P, Colton T (eds) (2005) Encyclopedia of biostatistics, Wiley, Chicheste
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Wilson, S.R. (2011). Biostatistics. In: Lovric, M. (eds) International Encyclopedia of Statistical Science. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-04898-2_147
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-04898-2_147
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