28172 - Biostatistics

Academic Year 2022/2023

  • Docente: Jeanne Jacobine Duistermaat
  • Credits: 6
  • SSD: SECS-S/02
  • Language: English
  • Teaching Mode: Traditional lectures
  • Campus: Bologna
  • Corso: First cycle degree programme (L) in Statistical Sciences (cod. 8873)

Learning outcomes

By the end of the course the students know the basic concepts and the statistical methods for the analysis of problems in the biomedical sciences. In particular students should be able: -to calculate and interpret the principal epidemiological measurements in various types of epidemiological studies. -to fit and interpret generalized linear models applied to biomedical data. -to apply the methods and models for the analysis of survival data.

Course contents

The course in Biostatistics covers the following topics:

Concepts in epidemiology and genetic epidemiology, randomised clinical trials, association versus causation, modelling strategies, logistic regression, survival analysis including the Kaplan Meier estimator for the survival function and its standard error, parametric models, Cox proportional hazard model and model diagnostics.

Readings/Bibliography

1) D. G. Kleinbaum and M. Klein. Logistic Regression, 3nd

ed. Springer New York, 2010.

2) D. Collett. Modelling Survival Data in Medical Research,

2nd ed. Chapman & Hall / CRC, 2003. [1st ed. (1994)

and 3rd ed. (2015) are also suitable.]

Teaching methods

lectures, exercise sessions including R, discussions about published medical articles

Assessment methods

Written exam

Office hours

See the website of Jeanne Jacobine Duistermaat