ABSTRACT
Information is abundant in today's world. Statistics can and should be used as a vehicle to turn quantitative information into knowledge, thereby assisting clinicians in the important medical decision-making process. No individual patient is a statistic, but understanding what has happened in a population of patients can guide clinicians in diagnosing and treating individual patients and, importantly, provides a basis on which to talk to patients about choices and decisions involved in their medical care. If all treatments or diagnosis decisions wereclear cut, probability and statistics would not be necessary. However,every individual is unique, and variation and uncertainty exist in every situation, "except for death and taxes" (according to Benjamin Franklin). The science of probability and statistics simply quantifies the degree of uncertainty and helps to identify sources of variation that may affect the outcome for a patient in order to minimize the random causes of variation that are uncontrollable. The basic science of statistics and probability is a valuable tool in the armamentarium of every clinician.
