Course overview
This course covers the application of statistical methods to understand genomes, their structure, function and evolutionary history, in many different scientific contexts, including: understanding biological mechanisms in health and disease, predicting outcomes and identifying individuals and their relatedness. The course will also cover methods that are used with family or population data to study causes of disease.
Content includes: Epidemiological study design and the theory and application of the major areas of biostatistics relevant to professional practice; complex statistical analyses to handle a variety of practical problems using modern statistical techniques and software; data collection and data management, including database design, quality control procedures and the ethical handling of data; identification of relevant statistical issues in practical problems in medical/health settings and the implementation of an appropriate statistical design and/or analysis methodology; technical skills necessary to read methodological papers in the biostatistical literature and the application of methods described therein to practical problems. R software will be used to apply the methods to real life study datasets.