STA 102: Introduction to Biostatistics

Course Calendar - the page to consult for homework assignments, due dates, exams, and chapters covered each week.

Before bombarding us with e-mails, check for reminders and last-minute announcents at our Course Info site.

Course Professor: Dr. Heidi Ashih

Office:	211 Old Chemistry Building
Phone:	668-2649
Email:	heidi@stat.duke.edu
Office Hours:	M,W,F 1-3pm

The photos of our class are now available!!!

WARNING to all STA 102 students. This course is *not* going to be the easy cake-walk that some STA 110 courses used to be. We will be covering many more topics and much more in depth than ever before. This class will take at least 6-8 hours of your time per week, outside of lectures and labs/recitations. It's important that an introductory course exists that will teach you about Cox Proportional Hazard models, ROC curves, and non-parametric tests (i.e., Wilcoxon Rank-Sum), not just multi-way ANOVA's, hypothesis testing, and basic probability. STA 102 requires both commitment and desire to intake and learn all these concepts. Consider it the statistical equivalent of Orgo.

If you're ready for a jam-packed fun-filled applied course, then come on!

Check out our announcements in Course Info for specifics.

The Syllabus I handed out on the first day of class is available in both postscript and pdf format, should you want to download it.

Teaching Assistants:

Name	Email	Phone	Office Hours	Office Location
Philippe Luedi	luedip@stat.duke.edu	684-8088		211A Old Chem
Ana Rappold	ana@stat.duke.edu	681-9390		Old Chem 214D

Course Description:

Reading and interpretation of statistical analyses from life science and medical literature. Conceptual bases for using data and understanding uncertainty when making treatment decisions about patients. Includes extensive reading and class discussion of articles from the medical literature. Topics include: basic concepts and tools of probability and conditional probability, independence, two-by-two tables, Simpson's paradox, medical diagnosis, ROC curves, study designs for medical problems, inference and hypothesis testing for randomized clinical trials's and basic survival analysis. Emphasizes role of biostatistics, drug testing, and clinical trials in modern society. No prerequisites.

TEXT (required)
		Fundamentals of BIOSTATISTICS , 5th Edition, by Bernard Rosner © 2000 Datasets from Fundamentals of Biostatistics

SOFTWARE
		S-Plus 2000 for Windows by Math Soft, Inc. ©2000

Computing

We will be using S-plus 2000, for Windows. It is available to my students for free through OIT. Please read the following instructions on how to obtain it. It takes a few days, so plan ahead.

Course Calendar

We will cover material in Chapters 1-14 of the text. This will be a fast paced course and it is necessary that you keep up with the material and assignments in order to receive a passing grade. You should expect to put in 6-8 hours per week as a minimum. Daily topics and homework assignments are posted in the Course Calendar which is available from the course homepage. This will be updated throughout the course as necessary. Other information and resources will be available on the ACPUB Course Info site for the course. Bookmark:

http://courses.duke.edu/courses/STA102.001-S2001

for access to handouts, assignments, online discussion, class email, current grades, and more! (requires ACPUB account to access)

Labs:

There are four recitation sections (Gross Chem 111) for this course, given at the following times:

Sec 1 Monday 9:10-10:00
Sec 2 Monday 10:30-11:20
Sec 3 Monday 11:50-12:40
Sec 4 Monday 1:10- 2:00
We will be using S-Plus for course. S-Plus is a powerful, flexible program and has the advantage over SAS and other programs of being easy to customize and provides excellent graphics. You can also save/edit your programs, which can be useful for research projects. Statistics packages, such as S-Plus and SAS, take some time to get use to, so hang in there! It may take a few weeks before you start to feel comfortable. We have a site license that will allow you to download a copy of S-Plus for free! For those without computers, the PC clusters on campus do have S-Plus on them. (note: there is a PC lab with S-Plus in the basement of Old Chem). You may also use the UNIX version of S-Plus, if you prefer.

Grading
There will be weekly quizzes and homeworks, two exams, and a final. The tentative dates are posted in the Course Calendar. Please check your schedules now for possible conflicts.
- Homework 10%
- Quizzes 20%
- Exam I 20%
- Exam II 20%
- Final Exam 30%
Although the exact percentages may be adjusted based on the difficulty of the homework and exams, as a guide you can expect that about 90% and above will be required for an "A", 89-75% will be required for a "B". Lower cut-offs may be used. Grades of "I" will be given only in extraordinary circumstances (requires approval of the academic dean and instructor). An incomplete will not be given on the grounds of an unexpectedly heavy course load.
There will be approximately 13 weekly assignments and labs throughout during the semester. Assignments and due dates are posted on the web. No late homework will be accepted. PERIOD. You are permitted and encouraged to discuss homework problems with others in the class, but the work turned in must be your own. Conscientious completion of all homework assignments is essential for learning the material and getting a good grade in this course. The lowest 2 quizzes will be dropped in determining your grade. No make up quizzes unless you bring in a Dean's excuse; make up quizzes and exams will be oral.
You will also need a hand calculator that can find roots, logs and exponentials. Bring your calculator to the quizzes and exams!