 Welcome to this course on medical statistics based on my forthcoming book Medical Statistics for the Busy Clinician. Now we're going to use Microsoft Excel for this lecture series on medical statistics. Easy to use, available to almost everyone. Why do we need to do this course? Well, you've got to understand the literature. When you read an article in a medical journal, you need to understand what the method section is all about. Don't just be a reader of the conclusion and look at the p-value and think you understand that journal article. Be part of the literature and understand it. Another reason, do your own research. Get involved in a bit of your own research and by understanding statistics which you can very easily do with your own software and your own computer, it will encourage you to become involved in research. Statistics is really not that difficult.