The accurate values of population parameters such as population proportion, population mean, and population standard deviation (or variance) are usually unknown. These are fixed values that can only be estimated from the data collected from the samples. The estimates of each of these parameters are sample proportion, the sample mean, and sample standard deviation (or variance). To obtain the values of these sample statistics, data are required that have particular distribution and central...

Pharmacokinetic models are mathematical constructs that represent and predict the time course of drug concentrations in the body, providing meaningful pharmacokinetic parameters. These models are categorized into compartment, physiological, and distributed parameter models.
The distributed parameter models are specifically designed to account for variations and differences in some drug classes. This model is particularly useful for assessing regional concentrations of anticancer or...

The term "bootstrap" originated in the 19th century as a metaphor for self-improvement or achieving something independently, without external assistance. This concept extends to statistical bootstrapping, a self-contained method for estimating population parameters through resampling, even though it can be computationally intensive. Developed by the American statistician Dr. Bradley Efron in 1979, bootstrapping provides a robust way to perform inference when the original sample size is...

In practice, we rarely know the population standard deviation. In the past, when the sample size was large, this did not present a problem to statisticians. They used the sample standard deviation s as an estimate for σ and proceeded as before to calculate a confidence interval with close enough results. However, statisticians ran into problems when the sample size was small. A small sample size caused inaccuracies in the confidence interval.
William S. Gosset (1876–1937) of the...

Mechanistic models play a crucial role in algorithms for numerical problem-solving, particularly in nonlinear mixed effects modeling (NMEM). These models aim to minimize specific objective functions by evaluating various parameter estimates, leading to the development of systematic algorithms. In some cases, linearization techniques approximate the model using linear equations.
In individual population analyses, different algorithms are employed, such as Cauchy's method, which uses a...

This lesson introduces two critical methods in pharmacokinetics, the Wagner-Nelson and Loo-Riegelman methods, used for estimating the absorption rate constant (ka) for drugs administered via non-intravenous routes. The Wagner-Nelson method relates ka to the plasma concentration derived from the slope of a semilog percent unabsorbed time plot. However, it is limited to drugs with one-compartment kinetics and can be impacted by factors like gastrointestinal motility or enzymatic degradation.
On...