Statistical Methods and Data Analysis I

Catalog description

This first course in statistical methods for data analysis is aimed at first-year Biostatistics students. It focuses on the analysis of continuous data. Topics include descriptive statistics (measures of central tendency and dispersion, shapes of distributions, graphical representations of distributions, transformations, and testing for goodness of fit); populations and sampling (hypotheses of differences and equivalence, statistical errors); one- and two-sample t tests; analysis of variance; correlation; nonparametric tests on means and correlations; estimation (confidence intervals and robust methods); categorical data analysis (proportions; statistics and test for comparing proportions; test for matched samples; study design); and regression modeling (simple linear regression, multiple regression, model fitting and testing, partial correlation, residuals, multicollinearity). Examples of medical and biologic data will be used throughout the course, and use of computer software demonstrated. Multivariable calculus and linear algebra and permission of instructor required to enroll.