Introductory Statistics for Life Scientists is a 10-week on-line course within Learn. It will introduce students to the basic principles of statistical thinking and outline some of the most common types of analysis that might be needed for Masters or PhD research projects.
You can access this course at any time of the year, there is no fixed start or end date.
Target audience
It is aimed mainly at students undertaking research projects (at either Masters or PhD level) in the College of Medicine (particularly lab-based subjects), but it may be of more general use, too – we welcome participants from any discipline, although the examples used will tend to reflect the instructors background in clinical research, public health and veterinary medicine. The principles taught, however, are universal!
Course content
Each week, participants will use resources such as recorded PowerPoint presentations, quizzes, and directed reading to investigate a topic, and will try some practical examples in Minitab, a statistical package available on the University’s Managed Desktop and in general-access computing facilities. Support is available through discussion boards that allow queries on specific points. The course runs asynchronously – participants work on course material and exercises in their own time, and interact via the discussion boards when required.
The following topics are covered:
- An introduction to the course and VLE
- Basic principles of statistical inference and exploratory data analysis
- Some basic concepts in probability
- Confidence intervals
- Hypothesis testing
- Study design – randomisation and blocking
- Study design – power calculations
- Correlation and simple linear regression
- One and Two-way analysis of variance models
- Method comparison/ reproducibility studies
Find out more here: https://edin.ac/2QUXevt
