Canadian Medical Guide > Analytical, Diagnostic and Therapeutic Techniques and Equipment > Investigative Techniques > Epidemiologic Methods > Statistics Terms and Definitions

Statistics

Medical Definition:	The science and art of collecting, summarizing, and analyzing data that are subject to random variation. The term is also applied to the data themselves and to the summarization of the data.
Guide Notes:	IM SPEC only: SPEC qualif; NIM no qualif; prefer /statist with non-disease terms: Manual 19.7+, 19.8.68; statist on dis = /epidemiol; IM for statistical theory or statistical methods; tables in texts are not necessarily /statist; do not confuse with MATHE
Also Called:	Area Analysis,Correlation of Data,Correlation Study,Data Analysis,Estimation Techniques,Indirect Estimation Techniques,Multiple Classification Analysis,Statistical Study,Statistics, Service,Tables and Charts

Statistics Categories.

	Actuarial Analysis - The application of probability and statistical methods to calculate the risk of occurrence of any event, such as onset of illness, recurrent disease, hospitalization, disability, or death. It may include calculation of the anticipated money costs of such events and of the premiums necessary to provide for payment of such costs.
	Analysis of Variance - A statistical technique that isolates and assesses the contributions of categorical independent variables to variation in the mean of a continuous dependent variable.
	Area Under Curve - A statistical means of summarizing information from a series of measurements on one individual. It is frequently used in clinical pharmacology where the AUC from serum levels can be interpreted as the total uptake of whatever has been administered. As a plot of the concentration of a drug against time, after a single dose of medicine, producing a standard shape curve, it is a means of comparing the bioavailability of the same drug made by different companies. (From Winslade, Dictionary of Clinical Research, 1992)
	Cluster Analysis - A set of statistical methods used to group variables or observations into strongly inter-related subgroups. In epidemiology, it may be used to analyze a closely grouped series of events or cases of disease or other health-related phenomenon with well-defined distribution patterns in relation to time or place or both.
	Confidence Intervals - A range of values for a variable of interest, e.g., a rate, constructed so that this range has a specified probability of including the true value of the variable.
	Data Interpretation, Statistical - Application of statistical procedures to analyze specific observed or assumed facts from a particular study.
	Discriminant Analysis - A statistical analytic technique used with discrete dependent variables, concerned with separating sets of observed values and allocating new values. It is sometimes used instead of regression analysis.
	Factor Analysis, Statistical - A set of statistical methods for analyzing the correlations among several variables in order to estimate the number of fundamental dimensions that underlie the observed data and to describe and measure those dimensions. It is used frequently in the development of scoring systems for rating scales and questionnaires.
	Matched-Pair Analysis - A type of analysis in which subjects in a study group and a comparison group are made comparable with respect to extraneous factors by individually pairing study subjects with the comparison group subjects (e.g., age-matched controls).
	Models, Statistical - Statistical formulations or analyses which, when applied to data and found to fit the data, are then used to verify the assumptions and parameters used in the analysis. Examples of statistical models are the linear model, binomial model, polynomial model, two-parameter model, etc.
	Monte Carlo Method - In statistics, a technique for numerically approximating the solution of a mathematical problem by studying the distribution of some random variable, often generated by a computer. The name alludes to the randomness characteristic of the games of chance played at the gambling casinos in Monte Carlo. (From Random House Unabridged Dictionary, 2d ed, 1993)
	Probability - The study of chance processes or the relative frequency characterizing a chance process.
	Regression Analysis - Procedures for finding the mathematical function which best describes the relationship between a dependent variable and one or more independent variables. In linear regression (see LINEAR MODELS) the relationship is constrained to be a straight line and LEAST-SQUARES ANALYSIS is used to determine the best fit. In logistic regression (see LOGISTIC MODELS) the dependent variable is qualitative rather than continuously variable and LIKELIHOOD FUNCTIONS are used to find the best relationship. In MULTIPLE REGRESSION the dependent variable is considered to depend on more than a single independent variable.
	Sensitivity and Specificity - Measures for assessing the results of diagnostic and screening tests. Sensitivity represents the proportion of truly diseased persons in a screened population who are identified as being diseased by the test. It is a measure of the probability of correctly diagnosing a condition. Specificity is the proportion of truly nondiseased persons who are so identified by the screening test. It is a measure of the probability of correctly identifying a nondiseased person. (From Last, Dictionary of Epidemiology, 2d ed)
	Statistical Distributions - The complete summaries of the frequencies of the values or categories of a measurement made on a group of items, a population, or other collection of data. The distribution tells either how many or what proportion of the group was found to have each value (or each range of values) out of all the possible values that the quantitative measure can have.
	Statistics, Nonparametric - A class of statistical methods applicable to a large set of probability distributions used to test for correlation, location, independence, etc. In most nonparametric statistical tests, the original scores or observations are replaced by another variable containing less information. An important class of nonparametric tests employs the ordinal properties of the data. Another class of tests uses information about whether an observation is above or below some fixed value such as the median, and a third class is based on the frequency of the occurrence of runs in the data. (From McGraw-Hill Dictionary of Scientific and Technical Terms, 4th ed, p1284; Corsini, Concise Encyclopedia of Psychology, 1987, p764-5)
	Stochastic Processes - Processes that incorporate some element of randomness, used particularly to refer to a time series of random variables.
	Survival Analysis - A class of statistical procedures for estimating the survival function (function of time, starting with a population 100% well at a given time and providing the percentage of the population still well at later times). The survival analysis is then used for making inferences about the effects of treatments, prognostic factors, exposures, and other covariates on the function.

Statistics Medical Definitions and Terms

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