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I find that in many contexts, the terms computational biology, bioinformatics and biostatistics are often treated as functionally equivalent, and yet for students selecting PhD programs and the like the difference could be quite significant. Is there a standard or rigorous definition of these terms and the difference between them?

Franck Dernoncourt
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Scott Gigante
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    Biostatistics is clear, but there's a LOT of grey area between computational biology and bioinformatics. – Devon Ryan Jun 01 '17 at 07:36
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    There are many blogs and question on this on other sites, I feel the discussions always becomes rather opinion based and semantic. Here's my personal favorite blog: http://cabbagesofdoom.blogspot.ch/2015/09/is-there-important-difference-between.html – Chris_Rands Jun 01 '17 at 07:48
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    As soon as you read "biology", you can be sure there will be no accepted standard or rigorous definition ;) – bli Jun 01 '17 at 09:14
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    I was afraid that this would descend into opinion rather than a having a straightforward answer - but I think this is a real issue that certainly students have no clear answer on, and should be addressed by this community. – Scott Gigante Jun 02 '17 at 00:39
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    NIH has had a working definition since 2000: https://www.kennedykrieger.org/sites/default/files/research_related_files/bioinformatics-def.pdf – rightskewed Jun 03 '17 at 01:18
  • There's also a blog post on it here – gringer Jun 04 '17 at 07:50

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