2.   Course Justification/Rationale

Statistics is the science in which we make inferences about some specific random process based on a sample of data which is sometimes quite limited. Biostatistics is one area of Applied Statistics that concerns itself with the application of statistical methods to medical, biological and health related problems. This course is an introductory course in Biostatistics. This course is designed to teach health science students the basic principles of biostatistics. It can be a first course in biostatistics for those students who will use the knowledge they acquire to enable them to continue learning more advanced techniques in future statistical and biostatistics course work.

3.   Course Description

This   course   presents   the  fundamental   principles   and   objectives   of   biostatistical knowledge needed in biomedical science practices. Topics covered include; Principles of statistics, Measurements, Experiment & Survey, Different study designs, Sampling procedures, Sample size calculation, Simple random and cluster surveys, Different data collection methods and instruments, Various sources of data and their use, Use of statistical methods in data analysis and interpretation, Measures of central tendency, variation and skewness, Probability theory including the laws of probability and probability distributions, Hypothesis testing using among others chi Square and t-tests, Analysis of variance (ANOVA), Confounding,  dependent  and independent variables,