| dc.description.abstract | The time that statistical analyses, including analysis of variance and regression
analyses, were analyzed by statistical laboratory workers, has gone for good, thanks
to the availability of user-friendly statistical software. The teaching department, the
educations committee, and the scientific committee of the Albert Schweitzer
Hospital, Dordrecht, Netherlands, are pleased to announce that since November
2009 the entire staff and personal is able to perform statistical analyses with help
of SPSS Statistical Software in their offices through the institution’s intranet.
It is our experience as masters’ and doctorate class teachers of the European
College of Pharmaceutical Medicine (EC Socrates Project) that students are eager
to master adequate command of statistical software for carrying out their own
statistical
analyses. However, students often lack adequate knowledge of basic
principles, and this carries the risk of fallacies. Computers cannot think, and can
only execute commands as given. As an example, regression analysis usually
applies independent and dependent variables, often interprets as causal factors and
outcome factors. E.g., gender and age may determine the type of operation or the
type of surgeon. The type of surgeon does not determine the age and gender. Yet,
software programs have no difficulty to use nonsense determinants, and the investigator
in charge of the analysis has to decide what is caused by what, because a
computer can not do a thing like that, although it is essential to the analysis.
It is our experience that a pocket calculator is very helpful for the purpose of
studying the basic principles. Also, a number of statistical methods can be
performed
more easily on a pocket calculator, than using a software program.
Advantages of the pocket calculator method include the following.
1. You better understand what you are doing. The statistical software program is
kind of black box program.
2. The pocket calculator works faster, because far less steps have to be taken.
3. The pocket calculator works faster, because averages can be used.
4. With statistical software all individual data have to be included separately, a
time-consuming activity in case of large data files. | en_US |
