Collection
Biostatistics
A practical introduction
Time to complete:
> 3 hours
This course includes:
Written by:
Last reviewed:
February 2025
All materials are free cultural works licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) license, except where further licensing details are provided.
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This collection will introduce you to common principles of statistical methods, and give you hands-on experience of user-friendly tools for data visualisation and testing. It is tailored to the properties of biological data, and uses biological examples. In the interactive online tutorials contained in this collection, R is used throughout.
Who is this course for?
This collection, developed by EMBL's Centre for Statistical Data Analysis, is for anyone with an interest in learning about biostatistics. No prior skills are required.
If you are new to biostatistics, you may benefit from first watching the webinar recording A beginner’s guide to interpreting results from biostatistics.
What will I achieve?
By the end of the course you will be able to:
- explore, manipulate and visualise data in R
- describe what sampling and probability distributions are
- visualise the distribution of your data in R
- explain the common principles behind statistical tests
- perform simple tests in R
What resources do I need?
There are no specific resources required to complete this course.
DOI:
10.6019/TOL.Biostatistics-t.2022.00001.1
Course contents
How and when to access the course
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The average time to read through the main body of the course is about 6 hours (not including exercises and external links). The time may vary depending on your prior knowledge and how you choose to work through the course.
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Activities
Quizzes
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