The Role Of Satistics In Biological And Medical Sciences In Developing Countries

Abstract

Statistics is unavoidable in biology and medical research. It is due to the complexity of these areas involving large population, many factors related to outcome variables, measurement aspects, clustering, and other things that invite statistics to play its role in biology and medical sciences. This paper describes briefly statistical method in these areas encompassing basic/standard statistics, modeling application in estimating/predicting parameters, statistical conclusion, and recommendations. Due to biology and medical research characteristics, statistics play Significant role in mixed effect models both linear and generalized linear models. Additionally, the experience of IPB (Bogor Agricultural University) in statistical education and research is presented. IPB is the oldest Department of Statistics in Indonesia has been contributing statistical concept originally in animal! plant breeding/quantitative genetics and now expanding to other biological sciences, epidemiology, and medical sciences. However, its contribution to molecular biology and geosciences is still limited. Hence, international collaboration in the area of geo and bioinformatics is required.