The University of Cape Town are running a free online course (via Coursera) on the statistical concepts encountered in clinical research. Understanding the statistical approaches used by scientists to analyse their data is key to determining the validity of the results.

The 6-week course (2–3 hours per week) promises an ‘easy entry’ into interpreting common statistical approaches. It will introduce the types of clinical studies and the variety of data that may be obtained from them. Hypothesis testing, confidence levels, parametric and non-parametric testing, how to compare categorical data, and how to analyse the accuracy of results will also be covered.