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The course objective is to enable each student to enhance his or her quantitativescientific reasoning about problems related to human health. Biostatisticsis about quantitative approaches - ideas and skills - to address bioscienceand health problems. To achieve mastery of biostatistics skills, a studentmust “see one, do one, teach one.” Therefore, the course is organized topromote regular practice of new ideas and methods.
The course is organized into 3 self-contained modules. Each moduleexcept the first is built around an important health problem. Thefirst module reviews the scientific method and the role of experimentationand observation to generate data, or evidence, relevant to selecting amongcompeting hypotheses about the natural world. Bayes theorem is used toquantify the concept of evidence. Then, we will discuss what is meant bythe notion of “cause.”
In the second module, we use a national survey dataset to estimate thecosts of smoking and smoking-caused disease in American society. The conceptsof point and interval estimation are introduced. Students will master theuse of confidence intervals to draw inferences about population means anddifferences of means. They will use stratification and weighted averagesto compare subgroups that are otherwise similar in an attempt to estimatethe effects of smoking and smoking-caused diseases on medical expenditures.
In the final module, we will study what factors influence child-survival in Nepal using data from the Nepal Nutritional Intervention Study Sarlahi or NNIPPS. Students will estimate and obtain confidence intervals for infant survival rates, relative rates and odds ratios within strata defined by gestational period, singleton vs twin births, and parental characteristics.
Developed in collaboration with Johns Hopkins Open Education Lab.
Overview
Syllabus
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Module 1 (Weeks 1 & 2) Question: What common background understanding do I need to get started in improving my ability to critically and quantitatively reason about health questions?
Module 2 (Weeks 3 & 4) Question: How do the average medical care costs for people with a major smoking-caused disease (MSCD) differ from those for people without MSCDs who are otherwise similar?
Module 3 (Week 5) Question: What is the rate of infant survival during the first 26 weeks of life in southern Nepal and how does the rate of survival vary by infant’s gestational age, sex, or being a singleton versus twin birth?
