ABSTRACT
This chapter reviews basic statistics for the administrator, worker, or physician who wants to apply quality improvement in his or her practice. It provides the reader with an appreciation of the correct use of statistics in support of the improvement of quality in the practice of radiology. Understanding the basics of statistics is essential for participating in total quality improvement. It has repeatedly been said that certain tools must be mastered and applied daily in order for continuous improvement to work. The chapter also provides the statistical tools necessary to collect the data needed to identify opportunities for improvement. The tools to be mastered include the concept of groups of items to be measured: populations, samples, data sets. The mathematic operations needed to reduce the data to useful information that is representative of the group being measured: frequency, maximum, minimum, mean, median, mode, and standard deviation.
