Biostatistics 1

Brief Description:

This course covers the principal statistical concepts used in medical and health sciences. Basic concepts common to all statistical analysis are reviewed, and those concepts with specific importance in medicine and health are covered in detail.

Instructor(s):
Level: Intermediate

Who Should Take This Course:

This non-mathematical course is specially designed for medical and health professionals who deal with medical data and want to acquire some statistical skills. These include nursing, pharmacy, laboratory technology and nutrition professionals beside physicians, surgeons and dentists.

Dates:
August 10, 2012 to September 07, 2012
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Registration:
Please read the syllabus tab, noting the prerequisites, text and software requirements.

Register Online -$499
Register Online -$399 (you must be affiliated with a college, university or high school)

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Courses may fill up at any time and registrations are processed in the order in which they are received. Your registration will be confirmed for the first available course date, unless you specify otherwise. Multiple course registrations may be entitled to tuition discounts; read more.

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Biostatistics 1

Aim of Course:

This course covers sensitivity-specificity and predictive values of medical tests, confidence intervals, medical vs. statistical significance, and chi-square, Student's t and ANOVA F-tests, including multiple comparisons.

Prerequisite(s):

• Survey of Statistics for Beginners, or Introduction to Statistics for Beginners
• Introduction to Statistics 1: Sampling and Inference
• Introduction to Statistics 2: Working with Bivariate Data)

If you are unclear as to whether you have mastered the requirements, test yourself with these placement exams here.

Course Program:

SESSION 1: Probability in Health and Medicine

• Medical uncertainties and probability
• Elementary laws of probability
• Bayes' Rule
• Sensitivity-specificity of a medical test
• Positive and negative predictive value
• Effect of prevalence

SESSION 2: Confidence Intervals

• Sampling distributions and SEs
• Large sample CI for one-sample mean and proportion
• Exact CI for proportion and median
• Large sample CI for differences between means and proportions
• Sample size for estimation

SESSION 3: Statistical vs. Medical Significance

• P-value and level of significance
• The concept of statistical power
• Medical vs. statistical significance
• Sample size for significance and power analysis
• Chi-square test for simple situations

SESSION 4: Some Statistical Tests for Quantitative Data

• Student's t-test for one-sample and two-sample situations
• ANOVA for one-way and two-way tables
• Tukey test and Bonferroni procedures for multiple comparisons
• Test for medically significant gain and equivalence test

Organization of the Course:

This course takes place over the internet, at statistics.com for 4 weeks. During each course week, you participate at times of your own choosing - there are no set times when you must be online. Course participants will be given access to a private discussion board. In class discussions led by the instructor, you can post questions, seek clarification, and interact with your fellow students and the instructor.

The course typically requires 15 hours per week. At the beginning of each week, you receive the relevant material, in addition to answers to exercises from the previous session. During the week, you are expected to go over the course materials, work through exercises, and submit answers. Discussion among participants is encouraged. The instructor will provide answers and comments, and you will receive individual feedback on your homework answers.

Credit:
Students come to The Institute for a variety of reasons:

1. You may be interested only in learning the material presented, and not be concerned with grades or a record of completion.
2. You may be enrolled in PASS (Program in Advanced Statistical Studies) that requires demonstration of proficiency in the subject, in which case your work will be assessed for a grade.
3. You may require a "Record of Course Completion," along with professional development credit in the form of Continuing Education Units (CEU's).

As you begin the class, you will be asked to specify your category.

This course offers continuing education units (CEU's). For those successfully completing the course (generally this means marks of 50% or better on the homework), 5.0 CEU's and a record of course completion will be issued by Statistics.com, upon request.

Course Text:

The required text is Medical Biostatistics, second ed., 2008, by Abhaya Indrayan. You may order it using this discount form or online (without the discount) by clicking here. CRC Press usually offers a 25% discount when the text is ordered using the above discount form.

Software:

Course participants should have access to a standard statistical software package for use in course exercises, including obtaining CI's, performing tests of significance including two-way ANOVA and multiple comparisons tests, and producing ROC curves. Stata, SAS and R have these capabilities and are supported by statistics.com teaching assistants. SPSS and Systat also have these capabilities.

For more information about obtaining free or nominal cost versions of standard software packages, click here.

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Biostatistics 1

Instructor(s):
Dates:
August 10, 2012 to September 07, 2012
Course Fee: $499
Academic Discounted Rate: $399

Before registering, please read the syllabus tab, noting the prerequisites, text and software requirements. When you click the register button, you will be taken to our secure transaction page.

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