APPLICATION OF STATISTICS IN MEDICAL GENETICS

INTRODUCTION
"Significance" has a very particular meaning in biology thanks to statistics. How does this term prove an experiment's results are worth special attention?
Once one has performed an experiment, how can one tell if the results are significant? For example, say if we are performing a genetic cross in which we know the genotypes of the parents. In this situation, we might hypothesize that the cross will result in a certain ratio of phenotypes in the offspring. But what if our observed results do not exactly match our expectations? How can we tell whether this deviation was due to chance? The key to answering these questions is the use of statistics, which allows us, geneticists, to determine whether our data are consistent with our hypothesis.

Statistics and Human Genetics are twin subjects, having grown with the century together, and there are many connections between the two. Some fundamental aspects in particular the concept of Analysis of Variance, first arose in Human Genetics, while statistical and probabilistic methods are now central to many aspects of analysis of questions is human genetics. The most common areas where one can find an extensive applications of statistical methods in human genetics is * Human Genome Project * Linkage Analysis * Sequencing

STATISTICAL GENETICS
Statistical Genetics involves the identification of genetic variation to help us understand why certain people are more prone to mental and physical illness. The variations in genes are due to natural selection, genetic drift, mutation, and gene flow. Statistical genetics(population genetics) came about in the 1920's and 1930's because of a few mathematicians by the names of R.A. Fisher, J.B.S. Haldane, and Sewall Wright. They developed models to explore how evolutionary processes modify genetic