Credits: 1 Offered: Spring 2
The Capstone is a required three-semester course for students in the MS in Biostatistics Program. It provides experience in the art of consulting and in the proper application of statistical techniques to clinical and translational research. Students will bring together the skills they have acquired in previous coursework and apply them to the consulting experience. Learning will take place by doing.
In the Fall term, the capstone-related lectures and project will engage students in important discourse regarding data management and research ethics.
In the Spring I term, the capstone-related lectures and project will challenge students to operationalize conceptual research questions into testable hypotheses. Additionally students will demonstrate their ability to determine the appropriate analytic method to test their hypotheses and discuss analytic alternatives when important statistical assumptions are violated.
In the Spring II term, students will meet the capstone requirements by shadowing Biostatistics faculty in the Center for Biostatistics consultation service. By shadowing the Biostatistics faculty, students will learn how to: 1) successfully collaborate with non-statisticians (primarily clinical faculty) at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, 2) provide appropriate study design-related and methodologic approaches to cutting edge research questions, 3) successfully conduct advanced preliminary analyses, and 4) communicate their findings to an institution-wide audience at an MS in Biostatistics capstone symposium at the end of the Spring II term.
Credits: 3 Offered: Spring 2
Applied Analysis of Healthcare Databases provides a comprehensive overview of healthcare databases that are commonly used for research. The overall course objective is to provide students with working knowledge of available healthcare databases, research questions that can be addressed using these databases and methods used for analysis of large scale databases. This course will prepare students to identify and use national and local healthcare databases in their own research. Students will evaluate published database studies, complete programming exercises with SAS statistical software and hands-on access to a large database, and prepare a proposal for analyzing a specific research question using a large healthcare database.
Pre-Requisites: (BIO6400 or MPH0300) AND (BIO6100 or MPH0400)
Credits: 3 Offered: Spring 2
The aim of this course is to provide a systematic training in both the theoretical foundations and the model building strategies of longitudinal analysis for MS/MPH and PhD students who have already had some data analysis experience. The course presents modern approaches to the analysis of longitudinal data with topics that include linear mixed effects models, generalized linear models for correlated data (including generalized estimating equations), computational issues in using these methods, and missing data assumptions and methods.e
Prerequisites: -BIO6400, BIO6500, BIO8500, and BIO8700
Credits: 3 Offered: Spring 2
The aim of this course is to provide a systematic training in both the theoretical foundations and the model building strategies of linear regression models for students who have already had some data analysis experience. The course presents modern approaches to the analysis of longitudinal data. Topics include linear mixed effects models, generalized linear models for correlated data (including generalized estimating equations), computational issues and methods for fitting models, and dropout or other missing data.
Prerequisites: BIO6400, BIO6500, BIO8500, and BIO8700 -Intermediate programming proficiency in R
Credits: 1 Offered: Fall
The Capstone is a required three-semester course for students in the MS in Biostatistics Program. It provides experience in the art of consulting and in the proper application of statistical techniques to clinical and translational research. Students will bring together the skills they have acquired in previous coursework and apply them to the consulting experience. Learning will take place by doing. In the Fall term, the capstone-related lectures and project will engage students in important discourse regarding data management and research ethics. Prerequisites: Must be enrolled in the MS in Biostatistics program.
Credits: 3 Offered: Fall
This course provides a rigorous introduction to epidemiology for students in the first trimester of the MS in Biostatistics program. Topics covered include: an introductory overview of epidemiology, common measures of health outcome frequencies and associations, appropriate construction of an epidemiologic hypothesis, causal inferences, common epidemiologic study designs, error and bias in epidemiologic studies, confounding and effect modification, critique review and evaluation of published studies, ethics and reproducibility in epidemiologic research.
Credits: 2 Offered: Fall
In this course, students will gain a comprehensive, hands-on, introduction to statistical computing for data management and statistical analysis in R, a free, open source, statistical software. This course is geared towards students interested in becoming skilled and efficient data analysts in the biomedical, public health, or clinical and translational sectors. This course presumes prior or concurrent enrollment in a graduate-level introductory biostatistics course. Topics covered in this course include: basic commands, functions, and operations for vectors, matrices, and data frames, debugging, loops, data management, data visualization, and univariate and bivariate analyses. Pre- Students must have significant, minimum scripting-level, programming experience with demonstrated productivity in one or more programming languages (python preferred, but R and Matlab acceptable). Students with only toy-model programming experience will find the course immediately overwhelming. Specific mathematical or statistical expertise is not required, but college-level mastery of basic mathematical and statistical knowledge of fundamental concepts should be obtained prior to starting class. Such concepts include basic calculus, linear algebra and probability distributions. If none of these prerequisites are available, attending one or more of the following courses is required: Course: BMI1005-1007 (all modules) Computer Systems Course: BSR1803 Systems Biology: Biomedical Modeling Course: BMI2005 Introduction to Algorithms Course: BIO6300 Introduction to R programming ++
Credits:3 Offered: Fall
This course covers the basic tools for the collection, analysis, and presentation of data in all areas of basics, clinical and translational research. Central to these skills is assessing the impact of chance and variability on the interpretation of research findings and subsequent implications on the understanding of disease mechanisms, drug discovery and development, and applications to clinical practice. Topics covered include: general principles of study design including internal and external validity; probability and sampling distributions, theory of confidence intervals and hypothesis testing; review of methods for comparison of discrete and continuous data including one-sample and two-sample tests, correlation analysis, linear regression, sample size and power. Additionally, students will learn to apply their statistical knowledge to complex real-world challenges, while gaining introductory statistical computing proficiency in R and SAS. Prerequisites: Algebra Required for MS in Biostatistics, students. All other students must take a placement test.
Credits: 3 Offered: Fall
This course covers basic material in Probability Theory, which is necessary for all work in Biostatistics, especially as a foundation for Statistical Inference. We will introduce the basic terminology and concepts of probability theory, including sample and outcome spaces, random variables, discrete distributions and probability density functions. Students will also learn fundamental properties of the most important discrete and continuous probability distributions, expectations, moment generating functions, conditional probability and conditional expectations, multivariate distributions, laws of large numbers, and the central limit theorem. This course is a prerequisite for the Probability and Inference II course. Strong analytical and quantitative skills are required to successfully master the material covered in this course.
Credits: 1 Offered: Spring 1
The Capstone is a required three-semester course for students in the MS in Biostatistics Program. It provides experience in the art of consulting and in the proper application of statistical techniques to clinical and translational research. Students will bring together the skills they have acquired in previous coursework and apply them to the consulting experience. Learning will take place by doing. In the Spring I term, students will start participating in real-life consultations and reporting in class about their progress. Prerequisites: Must be enrolled in the MS in Biostatistics program.
Credits: 3 Offered: Spring 1
This course provides a comprehensive overview of methods of analysis for binary and other discrete response data, with applications to epidemiological and clinical studies. It is a second level course that presumes some knowledge of applied statistics and epidemiology. Topics discussed include 2 x 2 tables, m x 2 tables, tests of independence, measures of association, power and sample size determination, stratification and matching in design and analysis, inter-rater agreement, logistic regression analysis. Prerequisites: BIO6400 or MPH0300 and BIO6100 or MPH0400
Credits: 3 Offered: Spring 1
This course is the second part of a two course sequence in Probability and Inference which follows Probability and Inference I. Statistical inference is the theoretical foundation for statistical methods used in the biological sciences. Essential topics covered in this course include: point estimation, confidence sets, the likelihood function, and statistical hypothesis testing. Optimality criteria for estimation and testing are developed. Other topics to be discussed include basic notions from Bayesian inference and Decision Theory as well as the theory of linear models. Nonparametric inference and other areas may be included as time permits. Prerequisites: BIO6400 and BIO6500
Credits: 3 Offered: Spring 1
This course provides a comprehensive overview of regression methods for analysis of continuous (normally distributed) and categorical (binary and count) data. The aim of this course is to provide a systematic training in both the theoretical foundations and the model building strategies of generalized linear models for MS/MPH and PhD students who have already had some data analysis experience. The course covers the theoretical background underlying regression techniques. Topics discussed include simple linear regression, multiple linear regression and Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) techniques for normally distributed data, as well as Poisson regression, log linear models and negative binomial regression for categorical data. Also regression diagnostics and Power and Sample size determination applied to these models. Prerequisites: BIO6400, BIO6500 as well as coding skills in either SAS or R.