Weekly outline

  • 17 February - 23 February

    Week 1: Course organization, reproducible research, hypothesis testing review

    The PRELIMINARY deadline for all reports is 30 May (any time).

    NEW: The FINAL deadline for submitting ALL of your corrected work is 10 July (any time; earlier is better!!).

    Grading
    • 1 point 2 points: short report 1, can be in a group of up to 4 people
    • 1/2 point: short critique on a scientific article, can be in a group of up to 4 people
    • 4 points: individual project report
    • 1/2 point: individual meta-analysis or power short report
  • 24 February - 1 March

    Week 2: Linear regression modeling

    The PRELIMINARY deadline for all reports is 30 May (any time).

    NEW: The FINAL deadline for submitting ALL of your corrected work is 10 July (any time; earlier is better!!).

  • 2 March - 8 March

    Week 3: Experimental design and analysis of variance (ANOVA)

    The PRELIMINARY deadline for all reports is 30 May (any time).

    NEW: The FINAL deadline for submitting ALL of your corrected work is 10 July (any time; earlier is better!!).

    Report 1:

    The purpose of this assignment is to give you practice writing a scientific report. Report writing is an extremely important skill, regardless of whether you continue in an academic career, in government or in industry.

    You should analyze your data in an appropriate manner (either like lab week 2 for regression or lab week 3 for anova) and write a short report, 3-5 pages (max). Please submit your report (as a .pdf file) by email. I will comment on and return reports in the order that I receive them.

    Your report should contain a short background/intro to the problem (including the aim of the original study), a presentation of the results of your statistical analyses, including exploratory data analysis, model fitting and final model, along with a short discussion of any shortcomings of the final model, and your conclusions. Include relevant graphics and tables, but DO NOT include any raw R code or output (you will be penalized for this if you do). Your graphs should be 'pretty', if you copy/paste a graph from the screen, it will most likely appear to be blurry and you will be penalized for this. It is easiest to include nice-looking graphs if you use R Markdown, but this is not the only way.

    Your report will also be graded based on language use and overall presentation. (It can be in either English or French.) Please use 12 point font and margins of 2.5 cm. Remember to number each page at the bottom (including page 1). Do not include a cover page, and do not exceed 5 pages or you will be penalized. Inside the top margin of each page, please include the surnames of each group member (separated by commas).

    As a reminder, this report counts for 1 points (out of 6) of your course note. The initial deadline (12.00 noon on 20 March) is for your preliminary report. (The final version is due by 12.00 noon 20 June). If you turn in your report before the initial deadline then I will be able to comment on your report.

    • Here are the group and data set assignments (UPDATED Saturday 7 March 15h15). For each data set there is also an explanation to go along with it, including which columns contain which variables and the outcome variable. There is also a literature reference that you should be able to access from EPFL / vpn.epfl.edu. You can use that as an aid to guide you in your analyses, but you can also do additional or different analyses if you want.

      Also, you can use the literature paper as a guide to how you might write your report. You should include a short intro / background, including a clear statement of the problem of interest; a complete exploratory data analysis (EDA); a description of your model fitting and selection analysis; a description of your model assessment and justification / results of that; your final chosen model written in mathematical terms; inclusion of relevant plots (they should be 'pretty'); any conclusions adressing the problem of interest. You will also be evaluated on the quality of language and the overall presentation of your report.

      If you return your report before the preliminary deadline, I will be able to give you commentary on how to improve your report that you can incorporate into your final submission.

  • 9 March - 15 March

    Week 4: Experimental design and analysis of variance (ANOVA)

    PRELIMINARY DEADLINE 1 (Regression problems R1 and R2)NEXT week, 20 March by noon

    The PRELIMINARY deadline for all reports is 30 May (any time).

    NEW: The FINAL deadline for submitting ALL of your corrected work is 10 July (any time; earlier is better!!)

  • 16 March - 22 March

    Week 5: General linear model and Model selection

    PRELIMINARY DEADLINE 1: regression group (preliminary) report, due by 12.00 noon Friday 20 March

    (anova group report preliminary deadline due by 12.00 noon Friday 27 March)

    The PRELIMINARY deadline for all reports is 30 May (any time).

    NEW: The FINAL deadline for submitting ALL of your corrected work is 10 July (any time; earlier is better!!).

  • 23 March - 29 March

    Week 6: Generalized linear modeling, logistic regression, Poisson regression

    The PRELIMINARY deadline for all reports is 30 May (any time).

    NEW: The FINAL deadline for submitting ALL of your corrected work is 10 July (any time; earlier is better!!).

  • 30 March - 5 April

    Week 7: Survival analysis

    The PRELIMINARY deadline for all reports is 30 May (any time).

    NEW: The FINAL deadline for submitting ALL of your corrected work is 10 July (any time; earlier is better!!).

  • 6 April - 12 April

    Week 8: Discrete data analysis, contingency tables, 2x2 tables; data visualization; asymptotic and exact tests

    Extra lecture this week, so that you can choose individual topic project before vacation week.

    Genetic association studies, genome-wide association studies (GWAS); principal components analysis, multiple hypothesis testing

    The PRELIMINARY deadline for all reports is 30 May (any time).

    NEW: The FINAL deadline for submitting ALL of your corrected work is 10 July (any time; earlier is better!!).

    Choose your individual project topic from one of the following (email me and I will provide you with a dataset)

    • survival analysis
    • logistic regression
    • generalized linear model (other than logistic)
    • discrete data/contingency table analysis
    • genome-wide association study (GWAS)

    Your final report should be ~5-10 pages (absolute maximum, fewer pages is better if you can be concise). If your report is longer than 10 pages (not including references), you will be penalized.

    I will comment on the projects in the order in which I receive them and get it back to you. You should then have a few more weeks to work on it.

  • 13 April - 19 April

    Easter vacation - NO CLASS OR LAB

    The PRELIMINARY deadline for all reports is 30 May (any time).

    NEW: The FINAL deadline for submitting ALL of your corrected work is 10 July (any time; earlier is better!!).

    NOTE: You are supposed to work on this analysis and report ALONE. Please don't hesitate to ask me if you have any questions.

  • 20 April - 26 April

    Week 9: Clinical trials

    The PRELIMINARY deadline for all reports is 30 May (any time).

    NEW: The FINAL deadline for submitting ALL of your corrected work is 10 July (any time; earlier is better!!).

    • Tutorial instructions:

      You can start reading at page 5, and do exercises 9-12 but ONLY for the t-test (not the tests listed).

      Next, read the section about power curves, then make a graph of power curves like the one in the tutorial, but with deltas varying from 0.1-0.9 by 0.1. Do exercise 13.

      Work through the section on Cox regression and do exercise 14.

      If you have time and interest, you can work through the section on Power Simulation. You can also do exercise 16 if you want (not required).


  • 27 April - 3 May

    Week 10: Meta-analysis

    1 May: PRELIMINARY DEADLINE 1 for group report

    The PRELIMINARY deadline for all reports is 30 May (any time).

    NEW: The FINAL deadline for submitting ALL of your corrected work is 10 July (any time; earlier is better!!).

  • 4 May - 10 May

    Introduction to mixed-effects models

    The PRELIMINARY deadline for all reports is 30 May (any time).

    NEW: The FINAL deadline for submitting ALL of your corrected work is 10 July (any time; earlier is better!!).

  • 11 May - 17 May

    NO CLASS OR LAB: time to work on final report

    The PRELIMINARY deadline for all reports is 30 May (any time).

    NEW: The FINAL deadline for submitting ALL of your corrected work is 10 July (any time; earlier is better!!).

  • 18 May - 24 May

    NO CLASS OR LAB: time to work on final report

    The PRELIMINARY deadline for all reports is 30 May (any time).

    NEW: The FINAL deadline for submitting ALL of your corrected work is 10 July (any time; earlier is better!!).