Differences between Original and Life and Biomedical Sciences?
JulieVu
Hello, thanks for your query.
OpenIntro (OI) and Introductory Statistics for the Life and Biomedical Sciences (ISLBS) follow the same general curriculum of topics: exploratory data analysis, probability and random variables, inference in the numerical data and categorical data settings, and modeling. A student who follows either book will obtain largely the same exposure to statistical topics. The main differences in coverage:
ISLBS has an online supplement to the first edition that is an extension to the material in Chapter 8 on inference for categorical data, providing additional details on summary statistics for two-by-two tables such as confidence intervals for risk, prevalence, and odds ratios. This material may be particularly helpful for students interested in medicine, public health, and epidemiology.
OI and ISLBS have differing emphasis areas in the modeling chapters. OI covers model selection more formally with backward elimination and forward selection, and also discusses logistic regression. ISLBS covers interval estimates with regression (which OI does as an online supplement) and interaction.
In terms of examples and exercises, the ones in OI are designed to be more accessible to students from a variety of disciplines. When writing ISLBS, our goal was to draw the majority of examples and exercises from published data and highlight the value of statistical thinking when tackling medical and biological research. As a result, some examples we use will challenge a student to consider the biological context in addition to the statistical ideas.
In terms of supplementary materials, both texts have labs that guide students in using R to conduct applied data analysis. There are 1-2 labs for each chapter in OI that cover the main ideas, while for ISLBS there are 2-4 labs per chapter that consist of questions illustrating conceptual ideas in addition to ones demonstrating how to produce and interpret analytic results.
Do feel free to contact us at julievu@g.harvard.edu and davidharrington@g.harvard.edu for any follow-up questions.
jmr2413
Hello,
Does anyone have a rundown or list of the big differences and/or distinctions between the basic OpenIntro Statistics and Introductory Statistics for the Life and Biomedical Sciences? Have used the original OpenIntro for a general Intro Stat course and am trying to provide more info to a committee to adopt the new Life and Biomedical Sciences for a Biological Statistics course.