Teaching a calculus‐based introductory biostatistics course to graduate students in health sciences

Abstract

The role of statistical methods in contemporary biological and health sciences investigations is now widely recognized and nearly all graduate programmes in these disciplines require at least an introductory biostatistics course. However, without exception, such courses are generally offered assuming a modest mathematical prerequisite—usually a course in college algebra—and do not make use of any calculus‐based analytical techniques. The use of calculus in an introductory biostatistics course facilitates a rigorous treatment of various statistical concepts and principles and helps to demonstrate many results which the students would have to take on faith, otherwise. Moreover, it permits a more complete discussion of continuous probability distributions. Though calculus‐bound statistics courses are now well‐entrenched in a variety of undergraduate and graduate level programmes in mathematics, statistics, computer sciences, operations research, and other physical, engineering, and management sciences, the u...