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Office: |
BSB-202G |
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Telephone: |
525-9140 x 23423 (24-hour Voice Mail) |
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e-mail: |
Tuesday 13:30-14:20, Wednesday 13:30-14:20, Friday 10:30-11:20.
Please come at the start of the hour. Other times by appointment.
Don't hesitate to contact me by telephone, voice mail, or e-mail any time you need help. If you need to see me at any time and my office door is open, I will see you then if I can, or arrange a time to meet later.
When you are working on assignments, I will spend some time walking around the BSB computer labs, and I will be pleased to talk to you about the course and offer help with computing.
Each student should be assigned to a tutorial group. If you have not been assigned to a group, select one at a convenient time and ask the tutor to add your name to the list for that group.
Use the tutorials to get help working through problems and examples in detail. Do as many problems as you can; there is no other way to learn this material!
Learn the language and logic of statistics and gain confidence in the application of statistical methods to problems of practical interest, with emphasis on the biological and health sciences.
Lay the foundations for learning advanced statistical methods after you complete this course.
Become comfortable with using calculators and computers to facilitate statistical analysis. Learn how to use spreadsheets and statistical software packages. Learn how to display data graphically. Get some practice in manipulating large data sets on the computer. Organise your results neatly into reports.
Rosner, B. A. Fundamentals of Biostatistics, Fourth Edition, Duxbury Press.
This book will be useful as your statistics and biostatistics handbook after you graduate.
You will already have covered much of the material in Chapters 1-8 in the prerequisite course Statistics 1CC3. As we review these topics, expect more attention to detail and theoretical foundations than you had before. If you have a good understanding of the principles involved here, you will have no difficulty with the rest of the course.
Chapters 9-13 cover the most commonly-used methods of biostatistics. How much we can cover will depend on the time available, but should include one-factor analysis of variance, two-factor analysis of variance, multiple regression, contingency tables, stratified categorical data, and nonparametric methods.
Copies of the lecture notes will be available in the Thode Library.
Students are required to use computers in this course. No previous experience with computers is expected. The undergraduate computer labs in BSB support Quattro Pro, MINITAB, SPSS and WordPerfect for Windows. These will suffice.
If you want to purchase a statistical package to use at home, MINITAB is recommended. It includes just about everything you might need, it is available in both the full and student versions through the bookstore, for DOS, Windows or Macintosh, and costs about as much as a textbook. The bookstore also sells a variety of manuals and guides for MINITAB.
A spreadsheet is very useful for organising and graphing data, and for basic statistical calculations. Any spreadsheet will do (Quattro Pro, Excel, ClarisWorks, e.g.).
Although spreadsheets and statistics packages are more and more replacing calculators for doing assigned work, you will still need a pocket calculator for small problems, tests and the final examination. There is no restriction on what calculator may be used for tests and exams in this course. However, you should have a pocket calculator that can accept data in X-Y pairs and fit a simple linear regression.
It is each student's responsibility to keep up to date with the course by working ahead in the text. Each chapter of the text has worked examples and lots of problems.
Five or six assignments will be handed in for grading. Some of the assignment questions will involve the large (and often messy!) data sets on the data disk that accompanies the text; this will give you some experience in "real-world" applications of statistics.
Please submit your assignments by placing them in the box marked for your tutorial group, in the basement corridor of BSB.
Wednesday, February 4, 1998
18:30 - 19:45
Wednesday, March 25, 1998
20:00 - 21:15
Aids permitted:
Tests will be written in CNH-104. Please see me the week before the test if you have a conflict, and I will arrange another time for you.
There will be a formal 3-hour examination in April.
Aids permitted:
All assignments will be counted. Only the better of the two tests will be counted. The final mark will be the best of the following four calculations:
(A) 100% Exam; (B) 80% Exam + 20% Assignments; (C) 80% Exam + 20% Best Test; (D) 60% Exam + 20% Assignments + 20% Best Test.
I will review all "borderline" marks and possibly make further adjustments.
We remind you of the "Statement on Academic Ethics" and the "Senate resolution on Academic Dishonesty" as found in the Senate Policy Statements distributed at registration and available in the Senate Office.