Biostatistics for biomedical engineers
Dr. Galit Ashkenazi-Golan
Objectives of the course: At the end of this course students should be able to (i) apply statistical methods to practical biomedical engineering problems; (ii) understand statistical designs of experiments; (iii) analyze and interpret data using statistical methods.
Main textbook:
"Engineering Statistics" (4th Edition, 2007), by D.C. Montgomery, G.C. Runger and N.F. Hubele, John Wiley & Sons, NY.
"Primer of Biostatistics" (5th Edition, 2002), by S. Glantz, McGraw Hill.
Course contents:
Contents
1 Basics of probability: Probability Space, Dependent and independent events, Poisson process, Bayes' theorem
2+3+4 Basics of probability (cont.): Random variables, Expectation, Variance, Common Distributions, Covariance, Pearson Correlation, Normal (Gaussian) distribution, exponential distribution, t-distribution, chi-square distribution, F-distribution
5+6 Concepts of descriptive statistics: Properties of random samples with size n, , point and interval estimators, confidence intervals identifying and rejecting outliers, boxplots
7 Testing of hypotheses:
basic concepts: type I and type II errors, significance and the p-value, 1-tail and 2-tail tests, decision making
8 Midterm
9+10 Testing of hypotheses (cont.): Z-test, T-test for one population, paired versus unpaired tests, testing the variance; examples relevant to biomedical research.
11 Systematic comparisons of means and variances: Testing for equality of variances, one-way ANOVA
12 Linear regression: The minimal sum of squared errors criterion, goodness of fit tests, Pearson correlation, examples relevant to biomedical research
13 Two-way ANOVA: testing with interactions, alpha corrections for multiple comparisons, power tests
14 Introduction to use of statistical software packages and practical implementation (SPSS, MATLAB statistics toolbox)
sizes
Grading policy:
- Homework assignments will be distributed in class on a weekly basis, with a due date of two weeks from the time of distribution.
- At the due date of each assignment, the corresponding solution will be distributed. The assignments will not be individually evaluated BUT submission will be recorded.
- Students are required to submit 80% of the total homework volume in order to be eligible to take the final exam. Homework should be submitted during class time.
- Grading percentages: 20% midterm, 80% final.