Teaching Clinical Applications of the Bayes' Theorem in a QBIC Statistics Course

• Activity Number: 306
• Type: Contributed
• Date/Time: Tuesday, July 31, 2012 : 8:30 AM to 10:20 AM
• Sponsor: Section on Teaching of Statistics in the Health Sciences
• Author(s): Ramon Gomez*+
• Companies: Florida International University
• Keywords: Bayes' theorem ; Predictive values ; QBIC ; Technology resources

Abstract

A widely used application of conditional probability is found in the health sciences field while evaluating the diagnostic ability of clinical tests. Positive and negative predictive values are major indicators in this assessment that represent applications of the Bayes' theorem not usually included in regular statistics courses for undergraduates. This paper describes the present author's experience in teaching clinical predictive values for a first statistics course at Florida International University. Students were biology majors enrolled in a special program identified as QBIC, an acronym for Quantifying Biology in the Classroom. The program is interdisciplinary and emphasizes the use of statistics for analyses of biological/biomedical data. QBIC scholars were exposed to various technology resources while learning predictive values. This teaching-learning approach demonstrated to be highly effective and provided QBIC students with a very important tool for future biostatistics courses and research activities.