Karl Pearson founded the journal “Biometrika” 110 years ago, and
laid the foundation for today's classical biostatistics (chi-square
test, hypothesis testing, correlation, more). His political views,
even for the times, were unsavory (a proponent of eugenics, he
advocated "war against the inferior races"), but his statistical
contributions remain embedded in the technical and pedagogical
literature. Statistics.com offers a two-course online sequence in
Biostatistics, starting with Biostatistics 1 on Jan. 28. Biostatistics 2
will follow on March 11. Each course is 4 weeks long, and taught
by Prof. Abhaya Indrayan, co-author of “Medical Biostatistics.”
Online courses coming up:
Jan 28: Biostatistics 1 (more below)
Feb 4: Introduction to Statistics 1
Mar 11: Biostatistics 2 (more below)
Mar 25: Survival Analysis
“Biostatistics 1” covers the standard statistical concepts from the
medical and health sciences perspective (confidence intervals,
significance tests, sample size calculations, Bonferroni adjustments
for multiple comparisons). Topics relevant specifically to this
field are discussed in detail, including sensitivity-specificity,
predictive power, exact confidence intervals, and testing for
superiority vs. testing for bioequivalence. The focus in this
course is on medical and health applications rather than on
method development. “Biostatistics 2” covers the basic principles
of design for randomized clinical trials, receiver-operator
characteristic (ROC) curves, relative risk, odds ratios, and
introductory survival analysis.
Dr. Abhaya Indrayan, in addition to authoring “Medical
Biostatistics,” (2nd ed., CRC Press), has also written a book on
medical research methods. He is Chair of the Department of
Biostatistics and Medical Informatics at the College of Medical Sciences,
University of Delhi, and frequently provides biostatistical Consultation
to the World Health Organization, the World Bank and UNAIDS.
The course will require about 15 hours per week; there are no set
hours when you must be online. Access to a standard statistical
software package for use during the course is necessary. Ask
questions and exchange comments directly with Dr. Indrayan via a
private discussion board throughout the period.
This course offers the option of university credit via the American
Council on Education's "Credit Recommendation Service," details at
http://www.statistics.com/academic-credit/
Course registration and details at
http://www.statistics.com/courses/life-science/biostat1/
Best regards,
Janet Dobbins
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