School of Public Health

Department of Biostatistics

PubH 7401 Fundamentals of Biostatistical Inference - Fall 2008

Course Objectives

This course is part of a two-course sequence intended for Ph.D. students in the School of Public Health who need a rigorous approach to probability and statistics with applications to research in public health. Course syllabus (rich text format).

Material covered

  • Tues., Sept. 2: Sections 1.2, 1.3, 1.4. Class notes.
  • Thur., Sept. 4: Sections 1.5, 1.6. Class notes.
  • Tues., Sept. 9: Section 2.1. Class notes.
  • Thur., Sept. 11: Sections 2.1, 2.2. Class notes.
  • Tues., Sept. 16: Section 2.2 continued.
  • Thur., Sept. 18: Calculus review. Class notes.
  • Tues., Sept. 23: Sections 2.2, 2.3. Class notes.
  • Thur., Sept. 25: Sections 3.2, 3.3, 3.4. Class notes.
  • Tues., Sept. 30: Sections 3.5, 3.6. Class notes.
  • Thur., Oct. 2: Sections 3.5, 3.6 continued.
  • Tues., Oct. 7: Sections 4.1, 4.2. Class notes.
  • Thur., Oct. 9: Sections 4.2, 10.2.1, 10.3, 10.6, 10.7. Class notes.
  • Tues., Oct. 14: Sections 4.3, 5.2, 5.3.Class notes.
  • Thur., Oct. 16: Sections 8.1, 8.3.Class notes.
  • Tues., Oct. 21: Section 8.4: method of moments.
  • Thur., Oct. 23: Section 8.5: maximum likelihood I.Class notes.
  • Tues., Oct. 28: Section 8.5: large sample normality of estimators; one-sample proportions.Class notes.
  • Thur., Oct. 30: 8.5, 11.2, 14.2. Models I: normal, two-sample comparison, simple linear regression. Class notes.
  • Nov. 4 and 6: Models II: simple logistic regression.Course notes. Matrices and vectors. Two-sample and simple regression models revisited. Course notes.
  • Nov 11 and 13: Coleman Report data in matrix terms. Introduction to hypothesis testing. Course notes I and Course notes II. Multivariate normal distribution. Course notes.
  • Tues., Nov. 18: Approximate (large sample) hypothesis tests and CI's. Course notes. Extensions of the two-sample problem. Course notes.
  • Thur., Nov. 20: Mann-Whitney test, One-way ANOVA, multiple comparisons. Course notes.
  • Tues., Nov. 25: Experimental design. Course notes.
  • Tues., Dec. 2: Experimental design, continued.
  • Thur., Dec. 4: Two-way ANOVA; a bit on transformations. Course notes.

    • Homework assignments

  • Homework 1, due Thursday Sept. 11, Chapter 1: 2, 12, 14, 16, 20, 30, 38, 42.
  • Homework 2, due Thursday Sept. 18, Chapter 1: 46, 50, 56, 60, 70; Chapter 2: 2b (pmf only), 12, 14, 22, 26, 30.
  • Homework 3, due Thursday Sept. 25.
  • Homework 4, due Thursday Oct. 2. Chapter 2: 45 (show all work; use the cdf), 52, 54, 56 (find the cdf of Y in terms of standard normal cdf Φ; do not find the pdf), 58, 69 (show all work). The volume of a sphere with radius r is V=(4/3) π r3.
  • Homework 5, due Thursday October 9.
  • No homework for 10-9 through 10-14.
  • Homework 6, due Thursday October 23. Sample R code.
  • Homework 7; due date moved to Tuesday Nov. 11. LLN1.txt, CLT1.txt, MLE1a.txt, MLE1b.txt, MLE2a.txt, MLE2b.txt.
  • Homework 8, due date moved to Thursday December 4. bodytemp, calcium, bearings, diet data, and some sample R code.
  • Homework 9 (final exam), due Tuesday Dec. 9. Here are the linseed data and insecticide data.

    Homework solutions (last year and this year)

    You may have to search through these to find answers to this year's homework problems, or maybe similar problems. Solutions A, B, C, Homework 3, Homework 5.