Essential medical statistics

Important information: Before you start the course you should have worked through the following school statistics - revision material see here

Welcome. This is the first course in medical statistics which has been designed specifically for medics and those concerned directly with healthcare provision, and while students from other disciplines are welcome to use the material it is advised that they search out examples of the various techniques discussed within their own discipline to supplement this material.

The course assumes that you have some knowledge of, and expertise in, statistics including understanding of the common types of descriptive statistic (mean, median, mode and standard deviation/variance), graphical representation of data (boxplots, barcharts, histograms, scatterplots and straight line of best fit) along with the basics of probability.

If you feel that you do not understand any of these concepts then please complete the brief refresher course above before undertaking the actual course.

I have taken this above strategy because most medics trained in the UK will have studied mathematics and statistics both at school and at university.

This is a 10 week ( around 100 hours of work) course which you may find rather different from other statistics courses you have taken this is because it focuses firmly on understanding and evaluation rather than blindly doing calculations etc. The concept of statistical validity is central to the course.

Another aspect of this course which you may find unusual is the introduction of a variety of software packages, for specific situations, the two core software applications being SPSS (for a short time called PASW) and R, including a free add on called R commander. R, a free open source application, has seen a meteoric rise in use in the last few years and is being increasingly used for introductory statistics courses.

This course requires you to carry out a large number of practical exercises yourselves and to facilitate this I have included a coursework booklet which you need to complete. Numerous screenshots in the pdf handouts along with over 20 HD youtube videos support this. Because the assignments require you to complete the coursework booklet, including other analyses in both SPSS and R, it is essential that from the very first week you carry out the analyses yourselves and do not just read the material and watch the videos.

Course details and material

week	date (for you to complete)	material (link to pdf)	my YouTube videos "theoldorganplayer"	notes
1	10/09/2012	Assignments details Coursework Booklet (to complete) Getting started with R Getting started with R commander	link to all videos or individual ones: R getting and starting R statistics (2) factors, datatframes etc R installing R commander to help importing Excel/SPSS files R commander introduction by R staff	link to datasets (zip file)
2	17/09/2012	Samples/populations
3	24/09/2012	Single sample comparing mean, including paired designs	Single sample t test SPSS , R commander & R Paired sample t test in SPSS, R commander & R
4	01/10/2012	Two samples comparing means	2 independent samples t test in SPSS & R & R commander
5	08/10/2012	Two samples ordinal data	Assessing ranks: Wilcoxon matched pairs statistic in SPSS, R commander and R Mann Whitney U - How to do it in SPSS, R commander and R
6	15/10/2012	Correlation	Z scores, correlations + p and CI values in spss, r commander + R
7	22/10/2012	Simple regression	Simple linear regression in 8 steps (part 1 - in spss) simple linear regression (part 2) in R commander and UsingR
8	29/10/2012	Proportions & chi square	Proportions and chi-square 1 Single proportion binomial test in SPSS and R 2. Several independent proportions against an overall average in SPSS R commander, R 3. and chi-square Goodness of fit -- one way classification in SPSS and R 4. contingency tables how to analyse them in SPSS, r commander and R 5. McNemar's test (repeated measures) in SPSS, and R
9	05/11/2012	Risk rates and odds	Odds risks and rates in OpenEpi Spss and R (part 1) Odds risks and rates in OpenEpi Spss and R (part 2)
10	12/11/2012	Hypotheses, power / sample size	Calculating p values for t, chi square and f values in spss and R (part 1) Calculating p values for t, chi square and f values in spss and R (part 2)
	Final assignment due 25th nov.		What are P values Sample size considerations (to follow)

Required resources

To complete this course you will need:

A copy of Norman G R, Streiner D L. 2008 (3rd ed) Biostatistics: The bare Essentials. [there are two versions of this book, you need the cheaper one without the SPSS disk] isbn: 978 155009 3476 Peoples medical publishing house/ mcgraw hill. www.bcdecker.com If you are a student of Edinburgh university/Rcsed you can access an electronic copy at: http://lib.myilibrary.com.ezproxy.webfeat.lib.ed.ac.uk/Open.aspx?id=227415
Statistics at square one by Mike Campbell et al BMJ publications, an excellent little book, available as a ebook at Edinburgh University
A copy of SPSS any version above 15 will be sufficient.
A copy of 'R' available free from http://www.r-project.org/
A copy of G power version 3 available free from: http://www.psycho.uni-duesseldorf.de/abteilungen/aap/gpower3/download-and-register

Additional none essential texts

Statistics at square two by Mike Campbell et al BMJ publications is excellent, and available as a ebook at Edinburgh University
Understanding clinical papers 2nd ed. by David Bowers, Allan House, David Owens.
If you are a student of Edinburgh university/Rcsed you can access an electronic copy at (edin uni / rcsed students): http://www.dawsonera.com.ezproxy.webfeat.lib.ed.ac.uk/depp/reader/protected/external/AbstractView/S9780470091319
statistics workbook for evidence based healthcare by Peat, Burton and Elliott at (edin uni / rcsed students): http://www.dawsonera.com.ezproxy.webfeat.lib.ed.ac.uk/depp/reader/protected/external/AbstractView/S9781444300505