Understanding biological variables and experiments

Before delving into biostatistics professionally, it’s important to understand biological variables, biological experiments, and their relation. One of the most important parts of biostatistics is understanding how biological measurements and observations transpose onto biological data.

We use the term biological variable to define a quantity, property, or measurement that can vary among species or populations, or even within a single species population. Examples were discussed in previous chapters, such as height, BMI (short for body mass index), and HbA1c (glycosylated hemoglobin), but there are many more that we will discuss in this chapter.

But before that, let’s try to understand where biological data comes from. One of the largest sources of data for biological variables is experimental biology. Many different types of experiments are conducted with the main goal of answering biological research questions...