Statistics for Human Biologist - Introduction

For many researchers in the field of human biology, statistics is a foreign territory where they feel uncomfortable because of statistical vocabulary used and the many different ways of analyzing their data. In a series of five short review articles, I will try to help these researchers to understand the basic principles of data preparation, descriptive and inferential statistics to guide them in analyzing their data. The review series should be seen as a complement to the summer school lectures of the International Summer School of the University of Potsdam in Gülpe in the state of Brandenburg, Germany. In this first tutorial we discuss the role of statistics in research and the role why a statistical tool like R should be used and what are the main considerations before we actually should start analyzing the data.