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Welcome to Biostat 501: Introduction to Biostatistics

This course covers the fundamental statistical concepts related to the practice of public health: descriptive statistics; design of public health research studies; probability; sampling; statistical distributions; confidence intervals; hypothesis testing; comparison of means and proportions; chi-squared tests; one-way ANOVA; simple regression; and multiple linear regression.  

The course also uses the SPSS statistical software program and includes many applications of statistics to public health and medical studies, emphasizing concepts and interpretation over formulas.

Course Topics & Readings

Part I. Descriptive statistics, probability and sampling

Week 1: Introduction, Descriptive statistics (Sept. 6-13)
Week 2: Plotting relationships (Sept. 14-20)
Week 3: Binomial and normal distribution (Sept. 21-27)
Week 4: Probability and random sampling (Sept. 28-Oct. 4)
Week 5: More on probability, review for exam 1 (Oct. 5-11)
Week 6: Study design (Oct. 12-18)
TAKE-HOME EXAM 1 (Fri 10/14 through Sun 10/16)

Part II. Statistical inference: confidence intervals and tests

Week 7: Confidence interval for a mean (Oct. 19-25)
Week 8: Hypothesis testing (Oct. 26-Nov. 1)
Week 9: Comparing two means, paired data and independent groups (Nov. 2-8)
Week 10: Inference for a proportion, comparing proportions (Nov. 9-15)
Week 11: Review of inference and Exam 2 (Nov. 16-22)
TAKE-HOME EXAM 2 (Fri 11/18 through Sun 11/20)

Part III. Chi-squared, ANOVA, and regression

Week 12: Two-way contingency tables, Chi-squared test for independence (Nov. 23-29)
Week 13: Comparing several means (Nov. 30-Dec. 6)
Week 14: Simple and multiple linear regression (Dec. 7-13)
Week 15: Summary of Statistical Inferences, public health applications, introduction to Bayesian statistics (Dec. 14-20)
FINAL EXAM (Fri 12/16 through Sun 12/18)