title: Statistical concepts and methods for the reader of clinical studies in emergency medicine.
abstract: An understanding of statistical concepts and methods is essential for the clinician who wishes to interpret the results of clinical studies. In this article the concepts of descriptive statistics, classical hypothesis testing, P values, a priori information, and Type I and Type II errors are discussed with examples to illustrate their application to the interpretation of clinical trials. In addition, descriptions of Student's t test, the chi-squared test, Fisher's exact test, the rank sum test, and sequential methods are given.
authors.affiliation: UCLA School of Medicine.
authors.forename: R J
authors.initials: RJ
authors.lastname: Lewis
authors.forename: H A
authors.initials: HA
authors.lastname: Bessen
mesh_terms: D015982:Bias; D016009:Chi-Square Distribution; D002986:Clinical Trials as Topic; D004635:Emergency Medicine; D006801:Humans; D016011:Normal Distribution; D011336:Probability; D013223:Statistics as Topic