Stats & Biostatistics

[bsneuroscience]

Hello all, I am currently taking a statistics course as a freshman student, and I've heard medical schools and medicine in general use A LOT more of statistics than calculus. Should I take biostatistics next semester or take calc 1 and be done with my math prereqs? The biostats class is geared towards biology majors at my school, but I'm a neuroscience major so I'm not sure how that would affect my performance in the class.

TLDR; is an intro to statistics class good enough knowledge to help me with what I need to know in the future as a physician or should I dive deep into more stats class at my university?

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[RNtoMD87]

I’ve never taken intro to stats. I took statistics (math 241 I think was the number) and it was pretty good to give you some basic idea of stats

 

[bsneuroscience]

I’ve never taken intro to stats. I took statistics (math 241 I think was the number) and it was pretty good to give you some basic idea of stats

My intro to stats class was a 250 class while the biostats class for bio majors is a 214 class so I'm not too sure about the rigor either.

 

[Cheenghee Koh]

You are correct. In modern medicine (and a lot of other modern sciences), everything is about statistics. You will have to develop statistical literacy to critically understand the literature and evaluate the evidence to do evidence-based interventions.

If you are taking the intro stats or biostats, in general they won't be too different. Usually they will have to cover all the basic ideas of statistics and scientific methods (i.e hypothesis testing). It is during the last 1/3, in biostats, additional topics may include Kaplan-Meier curve or other techniques in survival analysis (modeling the time to event, such as death). In most intro stats classes, we often stop at ordinary linear models, some may also include methods for categorical outcomes (logistics or Poisson regression) if time allows. Note, these categorical outcomes are also often seen in medical journals, and are often included in the intro biostats class. Generally, these two classes won't be too different. By the way, I see you majoring in neurosciences. I am not sure whether you will have to analyze fMRI data. That is a totally different set of skills and you have to take a specialized course on it. Good luck!

 

[Lost In Transcription]

...you’ll reasonably need both.

 

[Matthew9Thirtyfive]

...you’ll reasonably need both.

Depends. I’m taking biostats now. I previously took an intro stats course and an advanced stats course, and the biostats course I’m in now covers everything from intro stats plus some advanced stuff and wraps it all up in a nice medical lean. So this class would have been enough no problem.

 

[Lost In Transcription]

Depends. I’m taking biostats now. I previously took an intro stats course and an advanced stats course, and the biostats course I’m in now covers everything from intro stats plus some advanced stuff and wraps it all up in a nice medical lean. So this class would have been enough no problem.

True, I just meant that both basic calc and stats are important!

 

[Matthew9Thirtyfive]

True, I just meant that both basic calc and stats are important!

Oh, I thought you were responding to the person above you. My bad!