Wolfson Statistics

Beginners

This course is intended to provide a strong foundation in practical statistics and data analysis using the R software environment. The underlying philosophy of the course is to treat statistics as a practical skill rather than as a theoretical subject and as such the course focuses on methods for addressing real-life issues in the biological sciences.

There are three core goals for this course:

1. Use R confidently for statistics and data analysis
2. Be able to analyse datasets using standard statistical techniques
3. Know which tests are and are not appropriate

R is a free, software environment for statistical and data analysis, with many useful features that promote and facilitate reproducible research.

In this course, we introduce the R language, and cover basic data manipulation and plotting. We then move on to explore classical statistical analysis techniques starting with simple hypothesis testing and building up to generalised linear model analysis. The focus of the course is on practical implementation of these techniques and developing robust statistical analysis skills rather than on the underlying statistical theory

After the course you should feel confident to be able to select and implement common statistical techniques using R and moreover know when, and when not, to apply these techniques.

• The course is only open to graduate students and postdocs from Wolfson College
• This course is included as part of several DTP programmes as well as other departmental training within the university (potentially under a different name) so participants who have attended statistics training elsewhere should check before applying.

No prior experience with R is required, nor is any previous statistical knowledge assumed.

Number of sessions: 8

Learning Objectives After this course you should be able to:

1. Use R and RStudio to manipulate data, produce figures and perform exploratory data analyses
2. Analyse datasets using standard statistical techniques
3. Know when each test is and is not appropriate

During this course you will learn about:

• The RStudio interface to R
• Basic data manipulation in R (importing data, using built-in functions and plotting)
• One and two sample hypothesis tests
• ANOVA
• Simple linear Regression
• ANCOVA
• Linear Models
• Model selection techniques
• Power Analysis

Each session will consists of a short lecture followed by a practical session (using the participant's own laptop). Each practical contains more material than will be covered during each session and the participants are expected to spend approximately 1 hour of their own time finishing off each exercise.

Eight 2.5 hour sessions

Once per year

• Mathematics & Statistics
• Research Skills & Techniques