• Course summary
• Course objectives
• Topics by week
• Add/drop deadline
• Course director
• Office hours
• Communication
• Discussions
• Weekly rhythm
• Textbook
• Software
• Evaluation and grades
  • Co-operation and acknowledgement
  • Point distribution:
  • Grading scheme

Course summary

This course provides an introduction to the use of statistical techniques in biomedical and public health research. The course will cover common descriptive statistics including the mean, median, and standard deviation as well as techniques for testing hypotheses (analysis of variance, t-tests, regression, nonparametric methods) and issues in sampling and design of experiments. The class will be taught using online methods.

Course objectives

• Intuitive understanding of basic statistical concepts used in biomedical research
• Skills to perform common statistical analysis in Stata in a reproducible manner
• Present results of statistical analyses using graphs, tables, and text

Topics by week

Below is a list of topics we expect to cover in the course. The list may change depending on progress this term.

The course is divided into three parts of 5 weeks each. There will be two break weeks when no new material will be introduced. Readings and homework will be posted here.

Add/drop deadline

The last date to add/drop this course without grade designation is 2022-08-26. Please act accordingly

Course director

Saunak Sen, PhD 
Professor, Division of Biostatistics
Department of Preventive Medicine 
66 North Pauline Street 
901-448-4590 / sen@uthsc.edu

Office hours

Office hours are on Thursdays, 200pm-300pm. Attendance is optional, and there is no agenda other than to answer any questions you might have.

If you plan on attending office hours, please show up within the first 15 minutes or send me an email stating that you plan on attending. If nobody shows up by 215pm, I will close the Zoom session.

Communication

For an online class, communication is key. You will have freedom in scheduling and pacing your work. It would be to your advantage to be assertive and pro-active in communicating with me (instructor) and your peers.

Discussions

Any question or comment that is not private in nature belongs to the the discussion forum built-into Blackboard. If you are wondering about something, chances are someone else is as well. You may start a new topic, and if you choose to do so, please give an infomative subject line to help your peers.

Weekly rhythm

The class will follow a weekly rhythm as follows.

• Tuesday mornings: Lecture/video material and assignments will be posted in Blackboard.
• Thursdays 2pm-3pm: Office hours by Zoom (link on Blackboard).
• Sunday midnight (11:59pm): Homework (if any) will be due in Blackboard; email submissions not allowed.

Textbook

The main textbook will be

BCB
Susan E White
Basic and Clinical Biostatistics, 5th edition
McGraw-Hill, 2020, ISBN: 9781260455366

The electronic version of this book is available for free via UTHSC library. You will have to sign in to get access. The book has links to several datasets (some links may not work); we will use some of them in our lectures and homeworks. Most readings will be from this book.

Philosophically, we will be following the book

PSMR
Douglas G. Altman
Practical Statistics for Medical Research, 1st edition
Taylor and Francis, 1990, ISBN: 9780412276309

The book is beautifully written in clear, incisive, and plain language. The author has written many articles (many of them in the British Medical Journal) on the use and misuse of statistics in medical research.

The book by his longtime collaborator, Martin Bland, is more current.

IMS
Martin Bland
Introduction to Medical Statistics, 4th edition
Oxford University Press, 2015, ISBN: 9780199589920

I strongly recommend that you buy a physical copy of at least one book. All three books cover more material than what we will cover in the course, and you might find it to be a useful reference in the future.

Software

We will use Stata for statistical analysis. It is easy to learn, and is available for free for UTHSC students and employees. You can use it in a point-and-click mode, and it generates the corresponding commands as a transcript. Thus, you can reproduce your analysis (and mistakes, if any).

Evaluation and grades

The course will be divided into thirds of 5 weeks each. There will be a homework in each of the first 4 weeks, and an exam in the 5th week (midterm or final). All exams will be on cumulative material, i.e. on anything that has been covered up to that point.

Co-operation and acknowledgement

Co-operation among students is allowed, but must be acknowledged. For example, you can say, “Jane helped me find the right option to use to make a histogram.” If you search the web and find the solution, you are expected to cite the web page.

You are still expected to do your own work, without copying other people’s work. Students are expected to abide by the UTHSC honor code, and action will be taken if copying or plagiarism is detected.

Point distribution:

• Homeworks: 60 (5 per homework)
• Midterm 1: 10
• Midterm 2: 10
• Final: 20

Grading scheme