«L’irragionevole efficacia della matematica nelle scienze naturali»

An article published in the JAMA once again brings up the old question of the love-hate relationship between doctors and statistics. In a test given to American medical graduates in internal medicine, the proportion of correct answers was just over 40 percent. There is no doubt that statistics are very important within the cultural background of doctors for understanding both scientific articles and daily clinical events. Therefore, mathematics and statistics should become part of the common knowledge of all doctors, with the emphasis on basic concepts: the distinction between qualitative, ordinal and quantitative variables; the concept of average, median, quantiles, standard deviation; the bases of inference; the elements required for a critical reading of the methods and results of studies. In short, descriptive statistics.

Key words: Statistics