I have designed and presented the content within these pages specifically for use by undergraduate medical students who are considering use of statistics for short-term research projects.  However, this is with the understanding that students from allied health sciences may also benefit from engaging with the site.  Also, I am currently exploring use of selected content for outreach work in pre-university sectors.

All of the above involves a due understanding of appropriate learning boundaries in terms of statistical aspirations. Correspondingly, many of the more advanced or esoteric procedures which I use in my personal research are not included here.

Therefore, while the content on this site may be of help to other learners too, it should not be viewed as a ‘one size fits all’ solution to meeting the statistical needs of the universe! 

Statistics offers highly effective tools for presenting research findings meaningfully and soundly.  However, undergraduate medical students rarely appreciate that learning the discipline for their own research needs involves a steep learning curve and needs careful preparation.   I have designed the StatsforMedics site to encourage undergraduate medical students to engage with progressive stages of self-directed learning in advance of and throughout the phases of their research project. Bolting statistics on at the end as an afterthought is a recipe for unsound research practice and is likely to undermine the credibility of your results.

The content of this site has been informed by many years of experience which I have acquired in meeting the statistical learning needs of undergraduate medical students at the University of Edinburgh and by my own research in student learning and applied statistics.

Please note that if you are not clear where to find what you are looking for but you have a key search term, the search engine represented by the magnifying glass icon

(see topic right hand corner of each page) has a strong filter and may prove helpful.  Alternatively, if there is something you would like me to make available on this site, you are welcome to drop me an email. If you are registered as an undergraduate medical student with the University of Edinburgh, please do not hesitate to contact me using my preferred email address for this purpose (see MBChB Statistics page on Learn). 

Scope and use of site by Margaret MacDougall is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.