This unit provides students with core skills in epidemiology, particularly the ability to critically appraise public health and clinical epidemiological research literature regarding public health and clinical issues. This unit covers: study types; measures of frequency and association; measurement bias; confounding/effect modification; randomized trials; systematic reviews; screening and test evaluation; infectious disease outbreaks; measuring public health impact and use and interpretation of population health data. In addition to formal classes or their on-line equivalent, it is expected that students spend an additional 2-3 hours at least each week preparing for their tutorials.

On completion of this unit students should be familiar with the major concepts and tools of epidemiology, the study of health in populations, and should be able to judge the quality of evidence in health-related research literature.
This unit covers: historical developments in epidemiology; sources of data on mortality and morbidity; disease rates and standardisation; prevalence and incidence; life expectancy; linking exposure and disease (eg. relative risk, attributable risk); main types of study designs - case series, ecological studies, cross-sectional surveys, case-control studies, cohort or follow-up studies, randomised controlled trials; sources of error (chance, bias, confounding); association and causality; evaluating published papers; epidemics and epidemic investigation; surveillance; prevention; screening.

On completion of this unit students should be able to follow the mathematical demonstrations and proofs used in biostatistics at Masters degree level, and to understand the mathematics behind statistical methods introduced at that level. The intention is to allow students to concentrate on statistical concepts in subsequent units, and not be distracted by the mathematics employed. Content: basic algebra and analysis; exponential functions; calculus; series, limits, approximations and expansions; linear algebra, matrices and determinants; and numerical methods.

The aim of this unit is to provide a strong mathematical and conceptual foundation in the methods of statistical inference, with an emphasis on practical aspects of the interpretation and communication of statistically based conclusions in health research. Content covered includes: review of the key concepts of estimation and construction of Normal-theory confidence intervals; frequentist theory of estimation including hypothesis tests; methods of inference based on likelihood theory, including use of Fisher and observed information and likelihood ratio; Wald and score tests; an introduction to the Bayesian approach to inference; an introduction to distribution-free statistical methods.

The aim of this unit is to provide students with the knowledge and skills required to undertake moderate to high level data manipulation and management in preparation for statistical analysis of data typically arising in health and medical research. Specific objectives are for students to: gain experience in data manipulation and management using two major statistical software packages (Stata and R); learn how to display and summarise data using statistical software; become familiar with the checking and cleaning of data; learn how to link files through use of unique and non-unique identifiers; acquire fundamental programming skills for efficient use of software packages; and learn key principles of confidentiality and privacy in data storage, management and analysis. The topics covered are: Module 1 - Stata and R: The basics (importing and exporting data, recoding data, formatting data, labelling variable names and data values; using dates, data display and summary presentation); and creating programs. Module 2 - Stata and R: graphs, data management and statistical quality assurance methods (including advanced graphics to produce publication-quality graphs); Module 3 - Data management using Stata and R (using functions to generate new variables, appending, merging, transposing longitudinal data; programming skills for efficient and reproducible use of these packages, including loops and arguments.

The aim of this unit is to enable students to understand and apply the principles of design and analysis of experiments, with a particular focus on randomised controlled trials (RCTs), to a level where they are able to contribute effectively as a statistician to the planning, conduct and reporting of a standard RCT. This unit covers: ethical considerations; principles and methods of randomisation in controlled trials; treatment allocation, blocking, stratification and allocation concealment; parallel, factorial and crossover designs including n-of-1 studies; practical issues in sample size determination; intention-to-treat principle; phase I dose-finding studies; phase II safety and efficacy studies; interim analyses and early stopping; multiple outcomes/endpoints, including surrogate outcomes, multiple tests and subgroup analyses, including adjustment of significance levels and P-values; missing data; reporting trial results and use of the CONSORT statement.

The aim of this unit is to enable students to apply methods based on linear models to biostatistical data analysis, with proper attention to underlying assumptions and a major emphasis on the practical interpretation and communication of results. This unit will cover: the method of least squares; regression models and related statistical inference; flexible nonparametric regression; analysis of covariance to adjust for confounding; multiple regression with matrix algebra; model construction and interpretation (use of dummy variables, parametrisation, interaction and transformations); model checking and diagnostics; regression to the mean; handling of baseline values; the analysis of variance; variance components and random effects.
NOTE: Linear Models is an important foundation unit. Students who do not develop a strong grasp of this material will struggle to become successful biostatisticians.

The aim of this unit is to enable students to use generalised linear models (GLMs) and other methods to analyse categorical data, with proper attention to underlying assumptions. There is an emphasis on the practical interpretation and communication of results to colleagues and clients who might not be statisticians. This unit covers: Introduction to and revision of conventional methods for contingency tables especially in epidemiology; odds ratios and relative risks, chi-squared tests for independence, Mantel-Haenszel methods for stratified tables, and methods for paired data. The exponential family of distributions; generalised linear models (GLMs), and parameter estimation for GLMs. Inference for GLMs - including the use of score, Wald and deviance statistics for confidence intervals and hypothesis tests, and residuals. Binary variables and logistic regression models - including methods for assessing model adequacy. Nominal and ordinal logistic regression for categorical response variables with more than two categories. Count data, Poisson regression and log-linear models.

The aim of this unit is to enable students to analyse data from studies in which individuals are followed up until a particular event occurs, e.g. death, cure, relapse, making use of follow-up data also for those who do not experience the event, with proper attention to underlying assumptions and a major emphasis on the practical interpretation and communication of results. The content covered in this unit includes: Kaplan-Meier life tables; logrank test to compare two or more groups; Cox's proportional hazards regression model; checking the proportional hazards assumption; time-dependent covariates; multiple or recurrent events; sample size calculations for survival studies.

This unit will focus on applying the calculus-based techniques learned in Mathematical Background for Biostatistics (MBB) to the study of probability and statistical distributions. These two units, together with the subsequent Principles of Statistical Inference (PSI) unit, will provide the core prerequisite mathematical statistics background required for the study of later units in the Graduate Diploma or Masters degree. Content: This unit begins with the study of probability, random variables, discrete and continuous distributions, and the use of calculus to obtain expressions for parameters of these distributions such as the mean and variance. Joint distributions for multiple random variables are introduced together with the important concepts of independence, correlation and covariance, marginal and conditional distributions. Techniques for determining distributions of transformations of random variables are discussed. The concept of the sampling distribution and standard error of an estimator of a parameter is presented, together with key properties of estimators. Large sample results concerning the properties of estimators are presented with emphasis on the central role of the Normal distribution in these results. General approaches to obtaining estimators of parameters are introduced. Numerical simulation and graphing with Stata is used throughout to demonstrate concepts.

On completion of this unit students should be able to derive and compare population measures of mortality, illness, fertility and survival, be aware of the main sources of routinely collected health data and their advantages and disadvantages, and be able to collect primary data by a well-designed survey and analyse and interpret it appropriately. Content covered in this unit includes: routinely collected health-related data; quantitative methods in demography, including standardisation and life tables; health differentials; design and analysis of population health surveys including the roles of stratification, clustering and weighting.

The aim of this unit is to enable students to use correctly statistical methods of particular relevance to evidence-based health care and to advise clinicians on the application of these methods and interpretation of the results. Content: Clinical trials (equivalence trials, cross-over trials); Clinical agreement (Bland-Altman methods, kappa statistics, intraclass correlation); Statistical process control (special and common causes of variation; quality control charts); Diagnostic tests (sensitivity, specificity, ROC curves); Meta-analysis (systematic reviews, assessing heterogeneity, publication bias, estimating effects from randomised controlled trials, diagnostic tests and observational studies).

This unit aims to enable students to apply appropriate methods to the analysis of data arising from longitudinal (repeated measures) epidemiological or clinical studies, and from studies with other forms of clustering (cluster sample surveys, cluster randomised trials, family studies) that will produce non-exchangeable outcomes. Content covered in this unit includes: paired data; the effect of non-independence on comparisons within and between clusters of observations; methods for continuous outcomes; normal mixed effects (hierarchical or multilevel) models and generalised estimating equations (GEE); role and limitations of repeated measures ANOVA; methods for discrete data; GEE and generalised linear mixed models (GLMM); methods for count data.

The aim of this unit is to provide students with an introduction to the field of Bioinformatics. Bioinformatics is a multidisciplinary field that combines biology with quantitative methods to help understand biological processes, such as disease progression. Content: biology basics; statistical genetics; web-based tools, data sources and data retrieval; analysis of single and multiple DNA or protein sequences; hidden Markov Models and their applications; evolutionary models; phylogenetic trees; transcriptomics (gene expression microarrays and RNA-seq); use of R in bioinformatics applications.

The aim of this unit is to achieve an understanding of the logic of Bayesian statistical inference, i.e. the use of probability models to quantify uncertainty in statistical conclusions, and acquire skills to perform practical Bayesian analysis relating to health research problems. This unit covers: simple one-parameter models with conjugate prior distributions; standard models containing two or more parameters, including specifics for the normal location-scale model; the role of non-informative prior distributions; the relationship between Bayesian methods and standard "classical" approaches to statistics, especially those based on likelihood methods; computational techniques for use in Bayesian analysis, especially the use of simulation from posterior distributions, with emphasis on the WinBUGS package as a practical tool; application of Bayesian methods for fitting hierarchical models to complex data structures.

This unit covers modern statistical methods that are now available for assessing the causal effect of a treatment or exposure from a randomised or observational study. The unit begins by explaining the fundamental concept of counterfactual or potential outcomes and introduces causal diagrams, known commonly as directed acyclic graphs (DAGs). DAGs enable us to visualise causal pathways to identify confounding, selection and other biases that prevent unbiased estimation of causal effects. Throughout the unit students are introduced to statistical methods for analysing data from observational studies that generate estimates with a causal interpretation. You will learn propensity score methods and how to assess whether the effects of an exposure on an outcome is mediated by one or more intermediate variables, suggesting potential mechanisms and pathways. Comparisons will be made with 'conventional' statistical methods. Emphasis will be placed on interpretation of results and understanding the assumptions required to allow inferences to be called 'causal'. Stata and R software will be used to real datasets from cohort studies.

Recent years have brought a rapid growth in the amount and complexity of data in biostatistical applications. Among others, data collected in imaging, genomic, health registries, wearables, call for new statistical techniques in both predictive and descriptive learning. Machine learning algorithms for classification and prediction, complement classical statistical tools in the analysis of these data. This unit will cover several modern methods particularly useful for big and complex data. Topics include classification trees, random forests, model selection, lasso, bootstrapping, cross-validation, generalised additive model, splines, among others. The statistical software R will be used throughout the unit.

This unit introduces the topic of analysing linked health data. The topic is very specialised and is relevant to those who are familiar with writing a basic SAS program, who wish to further develop their knowledge and skills in managing and analysing linked health data, eg. hospital admissions, cancer registry, births and deaths.
Contents include: an overview of the theory of data linkage methods and features of comprehensive data linkage systems, sufficient to know the sources and limitations of linked health data sets; design of linked data studies using epidemiological principles; construction of numerators and denominators used for the analysis of disease trends and health care utilisation and outcomes; assessment of the accuracy and reliability of data sources; data linkage checking and quality assurance of the study process; basic statistical analyses of linked longitudinal health data; manipulation of large linked data files; writing syntax to prepare linked data files for analysis, derive exposure and outcome variables, relate numerators and denominators and produce results from statistical procedures at an introductory to intermediate level.
The unit is delivered as a workshop over 5 consecutive days. Lectures are delivered in the morning sessions and the afternoon sessions are computer labs where students gain hands-on experience using large health datasets.
The unit is usually offered twice a year, once in mid-June and once in mid-November.

The overall aim of the course is to develop students' knowledge and skills of economic evaluation as an aid to priority setting in health care. Students will be introduced to the principles of economic evaluation and develop skills in the application of those principles to resource allocation choices. Emphasis will be placed on learning by case study analysis and problem solving in small groups. This unit covers: principles and different types of economic evaluation; critical appraisal guidelines; measuring and valuing benefits; methods of costing; modeling in economic evaluation, the role of the PBAC, introduction to advanced methods including use of patient-level data and data linkage. The workshops consist of interactive lectures, class exercises and quizzes.

The aim of the unit is to give students practical experience in the application of the knowledge and skills learnt during the coursework program. Projects can be created or provided in your workplace or by a researcher, research group or institution. The project should involve analysing real data to answer one or more research questions. The analyses must involve multivariable regression modelling.

This unit is for students who wish to do a second research project. This project must differ from the first project (BSTA5020) in terms of aims and statistical methods. The second project does not need to include multivariable regression modelling and could include, for example, conducting a simulation study, developing a new statistical method, designing a study or data management of large complex datasets. The aim of the unit is to give students practical experience in the application of the knowledge and skills learnt during the coursework program. Projects can be created or provided by the student's workplace or by a researcher, research group or institution.