An alternative approach to teaching statistics to dental students.

From a review of the literature, instruction in statistics appears to be common in dental schools but beset with problems. Based, in part, on several surveys of the statistics content of dental literature, there is some general agreement that dentists-in-training need to acquire a working knowledge of statistics. Content guidelines developed for health science statistics courses are available and are considered entirely appropriate for dental education. Several authors have suggested that computer-assisted instruction is ideally suited to minimize the problems encountered in teaching statistics to dental students. Computer-assisted instruction is expensive, however, and self-instruction using a programmed text was found, on the basis of preliminary evaluation, to be an effective and inexpensive alternative.