title: The future of biostatistics: expecting the unexpected.
abstract: The paper explores the future of (clinical) biostatistics. In the first part of the paper important trends in biostatistics are reviewed: new applications and more complex data; causal models for observational data; cross-validation-based model building; graphical chain and random effect models; faster computing and new algorithms as Markov chain Monte Carlo; generalized estimating equations and pseudo-likelihood; pooled data sets for meta-analysis and prognostic modelling. In the second part some dreams and nightmares of the author are sketched. Dreams are: implementation of prognostic and diagnostic models in the clinic; an instantaneous numeric integrator; much more and better organized follow-up data; disease mapping in space and time. 'Nightmares', that is, issues which it is hoped will go out of use in the future, are: P-value; rank tests; exact methods; meta-analysis; matched case-control studies.
authors.affiliation: Department of Medical Statistics, Leiden University, The Netherlands.
authors.forename: H C
authors.initials: HC
authors.lastname: van Houwelingen
mesh_terms: D001699:Biometry; D003198:Computer Simulation; D004812:Epidemiologic Methods; D006801:Humans; D007400:Interprofessional Relations; D015233:Models, Statistical; D011379:Prognosis; D012107:Research Design; D013223:Statistics as Topic / Q000639:trends*