To show the organization of the course that includes this module, follow this link:  Course organization

Learning outcomes

The course is aimed at enabling the student to:
- estimate accuracy and precision of measurements performed in the biomedical field;
- properly synthetize and summarize the information collected on a series of patients;
- compute the probability of a single event or several events
- generalize findings from samples to the original population

Program

INTRODUCTION
The role of Statistics in Health Professions.
DESCRIPTIVE STATISTICS
Different measurement scales – Statistical variables and their presentation through frequency distributions: one-entry or double-entry tables – Measures of central tendency: mean (arithmetic, geometric, weighted), median, mode, percentiles – Measures of dispersion: range, interquartile range, sum of squares, variance (mean square), standard deviation, variation coefficient
PROBABILITY
Classic, frequentist, subjective interpretations of probability – Sum and product rules of probability – Independent and dependent events and conditional probability – Sensitivity, specificity, positive and negative predictive value of a diagnostic test – ROC curves – Bayes theorem and its application to differential diagnosis – Random variables – Theoretical probability distributions: normal distribution
SAMPLING
Populations and samples - Common sampling designs – Sampling distribution of an estimator (sample mean)
STATISTICAL INFERENCE
Point and interval estimates: confidence interval – Logical structure of hypothesis testing: null and alternative hypotheses; acceptance and rejecton regions; type I and type II error; power of a statistical test – Comparing a sample mean to a population mean: z-test and t-test – Comparing the means of two independent or dependent samples: unpaired or paired t-test – Comparing proportions from two independent samples: chi-square test – Correlation and regression

Examination Methods

The written examination will consists of about 25 multiple choice questions with 5-8 possible answers, and one exercise of Statistical Inference on a simple data set. Wrong answers to the written examination will be orally discussed with the student.