Statistics in Small Doses

Statistics in Small Doses 18 – What about systematic reviews and meta-analyses?

In the last Statistics in small doses, it was concluded that the triangle of study designs can be misleading if viewed as a hierarchy. The clinical trial, sitting as it ...

Statistics in Small Doses 17 – Are Observational Studies Helpful to Medical Research?

  “State IDs restaurant as source of disease” [Honolulu Star Bulletin, 16 August 2016]“State embargoes suspect scallops” [Honolulu Star Bulletin, 17 August 2016] The Hawaii State Department of Health immediately closed all Genki Sushi ...

Statistics in Small Doses 16 – Oh My, Yet Another Editorial on the P Value?

From time to time an interesting article appears or an interesting conversation takes place that deserves to be shared among fellow researchers. This Statistics in Small Doses describes an important ...

Statistics in small doses 15 Part B – More statistical hot spots: How important is common sense to statistical sense?

Inconsistent time points at which measurements are taken Correlation between measures taken at different time points become less meaningful A measure of limb functionality may be obtained from POD1 thru ...

Statistics in Small Doses 15 Part A – What are some Statistical Hot Spots?

Many commercial software programs can handle all but the most esoteric statistical tests with simple clicks on a computer keyboard. There are even YouTube videos that show which buttons to ...

Statistics in Small Doses 14 B – What are the Confidence Intervals?

In research, the value reflecting ‘no effect’ is usually 0 or 1.0. So, like traditional significance testing, if 0 or 1.0 is inside the confidence interval (CI), there is no significant difference ...

Statistics in Small Doses 14 A – What are Confidence Intervals?

“In medical studies investigators are usually interested in determining the size of difference of a measured outcome between groups, rather than a simple indication of whether or not it ...

Statistics in Small Doses 12 – What are P Values?

P-values are often sought as some kind of Holy Grail in science. Arguably one of the most controversial topics in statistics, we start our 2016 series of ‘statistics in small ...

Statistics in Small Doses 11 – Does Shape Matter?

Like humans, frequency distributions come in different shapes. Immediately after surgery, the majority of patients in the PACU may report ‘no to low’ pain on the Numeric Rating ...

Statistics in Small Doses 10 – What factors affect sample size?

This installment of ‘statistics in small doses’ goes hand-in-glove with the previous – Does (sample) size matter? We need not wade through sample size formulae as these are ...