BIOSTATISTICS
GENERAL TARGET
At the end of the course students should be able:
To use epidemiological and bio-statistical tools for a better understanding of biomedical information and for improving medical decision making.
INTERMEDIATE TARGETS
At the end of the course students should be able to:
Organize collected data;
• Construct and interpret graphs;
• Describe the differences between the different measuring scales;
• To calculate the most common indices of central trend and variability of the data;
• Analyze frequency distribution curves;
• Use some inferential statistical techniques.
Autonomy of Judgement: At the end of the course students should be able to reading articles related to topics related to the CdS with significant content of biostatistics.
Communication skills: At the end of the course students should be able to use the technical language of medical statistics
The course aims to provide the basic knowledge of medical statistics for the analysis of biomedical data and the interpretation of the phenomena analyzed.
• Purposes and methods of statistical analysis; Statistical characters and classification.
• Data synthesis Tools: absolute, relative, cumulated frequencies; Arrangement and organization of data in tables; Frequency distributions.
• Main graphical representations: orthograms, circular field diagrams, histograms, frequency polygons, scatter diagrams.
• Central trend indices: Arithmetic mean and its properties, mode and median, Terzili, quartiles and percentiles.
• Variability indices: range, deviance, variance, standard deviation and coefficient of variation. Box-Plot.
• Frequency distribution curves. Symmetry indices.
• Normal distribution, standardized normal distribution.
• Confidence interval for an arithmetic mean and for a proportion.
• Concept of statistical hypothesis testing.
• Relationship between two qualitative characters: the Chi-squared test as a measure of association between two qualitative variables, the chi-squared with the correction of Yates for the continuity, the exact Fisher test.
• Student T-test for independent samples and student T-test for paired samples.
• Relationship between two quantitative characters: regression analysis and correlation analysis
• Critical reading of articles related to topics related to the CdS with significant content of biostatistics.
• Evaluation of diagnostic tests. Sensitivity definitions (SE), specificity (SP), positive predictive values (VPP), and negative (VPN).
• Techniques of determination of the curves ROC
• Elements of probability calculation. Definition of probability. Calculation of the probabilities of mutually exclusive, independent and conditioned events.
• Copy of the slides used during the lessons and bibliographic material available on-line on the site www.biostatistica.unich.it
• J Fowler, P Jarvis, M Chevannes. STATISTICA PER LE PROFESSIONI SANITARIE. EdiSES
The teaching is structured in 30 hours of frontal didactics, each lesson will be divided into two parts. A first part in which will be presented the topic of the lesson and in a second part in which will be proposed by the teacher of the exercises that allow to verify the practical application of the topics treated in a theoretical way.
The verification of the preparation of the students will be done by written examination composed of multiple answer questions and/or exercises that allow to verify the practical application of the subjects covered. The total points (30) will be divided on the basis of the questions present on the task and reported on the text in relation to each individual test question. There is no oral test.
The duration of the test is 30 minutes.
The teaching methodology and the methods of verification will be presented by the teacher at the beginning of the course.
Students will be received by the teacher by appointment to be agreed by e-mail to the address marta.dinicola@unich.it