Data analysis and statistics workshop

Welcome to Data Analysis and Statistics Workshop!

This is the public version of the Brandeis course, for anyone to follow.

The majority of the actual class, when it is offered at Brandeis, is conducted on the web. The "lecture" time is devoted to completing in-class tutorials called Labs. Problem sets (homework) are due periodically (presently not available to the public). In addition, we have 3 small team projects (also presently not available).

The Labs are intended to be completed in order. The labs are designed so they can be completed without instructor input, although in the real class at Brandeis the students can and do ask questions of the instructor. Each lab is designed to take up a 1.5 hour class period.

The material is presented in a question-driven manner; programming concepts are explained as they become useful to answer scientific questions. This style is backwards of most engineering courses, so the material may (hopefully) make biologists happy but may feel odd to engineers.

Here online, there is a discussion forum hosted by the educational website Piazza. I will have limited time to moderate the forum but the users are encouraged to help each other with the material. We'll see how it works!

If you use this material in a class, please be sure to provide a citation. If you improve the material, I'd love to incorporate your improvements.

Over the long haul, I'd like to add short on-line video lectures and feedback, and to break the course into smaller pieces for easier consumption (real life isn't divided into 1.5 hour chunks). This will happen slowly.

Thanks especially to my colleagues (mentioned throughout) for providing data for analysis, and especially to my students and first TA Bethany Christmann for helping to make the material clearer.

Enjoy!

-- Steve Van Hooser, 2013

SDV and the Van Hooser lab are supported by Brandeis University, the US National Science Foundation, the US National Institutes of Health, the Charles H. Hood Foundation, the Massachusetts Life Sciences Center, and the John Merck Foundation.