Statistical approaches to make decisions in clinical experiments

Often, experiments in biomedicine and other health-related sciences involve mathematically formalized tests, employing appropriate and efficient statistical procedures to analyze data. In order to make conclusions about populations on the basis of samples from those populations, clinical trials commonly require the application of the mathematical statistical discipline. This chapter helps the reader to correctly formulate statistical hypotheses with respect to the aims of epidemiological and/or biomedical studies, and construct and provide statistical decision-making test rules corresponding to practical experiments. It helps the reader to use parametric and nonparametric likelihood testing techniques in applied researches, and understand basic properties of likelihood ratio-type tests in parametric and nonparametric manners. The chapter also enables the reader to use their components such as t-test and goodness-of-fit test, in practical statistical decision-making mechanisms, and employ statistical software such as R, at a beginning level.