Key Statistical Concepts

This chapter offers a statistics boot camp for the study of data on health care outcomes. These outcomes are frequently not normally distributed and require specialized modeling and regression techniques. After reviewing basic statistical concepts, we introduce statistical distributions commonly used to model health outcomes. We explain conditional and marginal estimation, discuss between-individual heterogeneity, and recommend strategies for working with heavy-tailed distributions. We conclude with a review of hypothesis testing and a discussion about inference in small—and big—data settings.