CHL5207Y: Laboratory in Statistical Design and Analysis

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CHL5207Y

(Laboratory in Statistical Design and Analysis)

2023-2024

Course Description and Code of Conduct

Course – General Description

Format

This is a full year course with the following format: 1) a weekly 2-hour in-person lecture and 2) a weekly in-person practicum. Weekly lectures focus on design, analysis, and reporting issues. Practicums can run either in the fall/winter terms (i.e., September-April), or alternatively, in the spring/summer sessions (i.e., May-August). The practicum supervisor is responsible for deciding when to schedule the practicum (fall/winter vs. spring/summer).

Objectives

The main goal of the lecture series is to introduce the student to common statistical design, analysis and reporting techniques commonly encountered by the practicing biostatistician.

The main goal of the practicum is to provide the student with firsthand experience with design and analysis issues encountered by applied statisticians in a real workforce setting. It also emphasizes the importance of effective communication skills (oral and written) and other soft skills required by a biostatistician/data scientist to be effective in today’s work environment.

Syllabus

The course syllabus will be available to students on the course web page in Quercus the first week of class.

Enrolment

This course is only open to students registered in the MSc Biostatistics Program.

Pre-requisites

Admission to the Program.

Program Requirements

A required course within the MSc Biostatistics Program.

Student Evaluation

Given the importance of communication skills for the practicing biostatistician, verbal and written skills feature prominently in student evaluation.

Fall/Winter Practicum

Important:

(*) The winter term presentations will be scheduled for the week after exam week.

Summer Practicum

There will be one assignment in the fall term and one assignment in the winter term. Each assignment will require 1) an analysis of a dataset and 2) a brief report summarizing the analysis. The report should use tables and figures to complement the text. The report should not exceed five hundred words and may contain a maximum of one table and one figure. The report should include a brief introduction which includes a description of the dataset, a methods section, a results section, and a main conclusion.

End of term presentations

The presentations should describe the work accomplished in the relevant period. Each presentation will run a maximum of 10 minutes with up to 5 minutes for questions and answers (Q & A). Given there is only a single presentation for spring/summer practicums these presentations will run a maximum of 20 minutes with up to 10 minutes for the Q & A session.

The course instructors will evaluate each student presentation. The list of evaluation criteria follows below. The score for each category is between one (minimum) and ten (maximum). Evaluators should provide comments to augment these scores. Student scores will represent an average of the scores provided by each evaluator present.

Delivery: speed, eye contact, clarity, audibility, tone, extent of use of notes, composure, posture, facial expressions, faces audience

Content: Sets out relevant issues, explains key terms, confident with material, aids understanding

Structure: Logical, easy to follow, provides headings, each section relates to overall purpose.

Slides: Enrich the presentation, easy to read, graphs/tables used and described/explained throughout; free of spelling / grammar errors

Response to questions: repeats questions for audience, answers questions appropriately

As a guideline the student should aim to use between 10 and 15 slides. A suggested structure is as follows: 1) Background, 2) Primary question or hypothesis test 3) Methods, 4) Results (including well labeled tables and figures) and 5) Summary and future work.

Important: Students are required to send an abstract of their presentation at least 24 hours beforehand. This is to help instructors prepare questions in advance for the student presenter. Send the abstract to Ryan Rosner at [email protected]

End of term evaluation by practicum supervisors

■ Occurs at the end of each term (for fall/winter practicum) or in August (for summer practicums).

■ Evaluation criteria include:

o Attendance

o Punctuality

o Initiative / participation

o Level of independence displayed.

o Ability to understand/follow instructions.

o Communication (verbal/written)

■ The score for each of the six items ranges from a low of one to a high of five. The maximum score is, therefore, 30. Individual item scores can be half marks. For example, 3.5 for punctuality.

■ Supervisor comments should accompany the scores to provide additional details of student assessment.

Final Report

Each student should submit an on-line copy of his or her report to Prof. Tony Panzarella at [email protected] copying Ryan Rosner at [email protected] . The deadline is 5 pm, August 15 (for those planning to graduate in November) or the last day of class in April (if you plan to graduate in June). The due date for those enrolled in a summer practicum is 5 pm, August 30.

Late submissions will incur a penalty of 5% per day.

The final report resembles a research manuscript with the following mandatory sections: Abstract, Introduction, Materials and Methods, Results, Discussion, Conclusion and Appendix. The Appendix should include the programming code and any ancillary analyses. The Abstract and Introduction should follow a structured format (see below). The use of tables and figures should be expeditious and used to convey the report’s most important results. Like the Abstract section, Tables and Figures should be self-contained and include appropriate headings.

Structured Abstract:

1) Background 2) Objectives 3) Methods 4) Results, and 5) Conclusions.

The abstract should be a concise (250 words or less), standalone summary of the paper, with 1–2 sentences on each of these topics:

Background: What issues led to this work? What is the environment that makes this work interesting or important?

Objectives: What were the goals of this work? What gap in knowledge does this address?

Methods: What went into trying to achieve the aims (e.g., experimental method, simulation approach, theoretical approach, combinations of these)? Describe.

Results: What were the main results of the study (including numbers, if appropriate)?

Conclusions: What were the main conclusions? Why are the results important? Where will they lead?

Ensure that all the information found in the abstract is also in the body of the paper.

Ensure that the essential information of the paper is in the abstract.

Avoid: using the first paragraph of the introduction as an abstract; citations in the abstract; acronyms (but if used, spell them out); referring to figures or tables from the body of the paper; use of the first person; use of words like “new” or “novel,” or phrases like “in this paper,” “we report,” or “will be discussed.”

Structured Introduction

Sections to include: 1) Background 2) Purpose of the Research, and 3) Research Questions Introduction Checklist

"Introduction Checklist" from: How to Write a Good Scientific Paper. Chris A. Mack. SPIE. 2018.

Introduction

• Indicate the field of the work, why this field is important, and what has already occurred (with proper citations).

• Indicate a gap, raise a research question, or challenge prior work in this area.

• Outline the purpose and announce the present research, clearly indicating what is novel and why it is significant.

• Avoid: repeating the abstract; providing unnecessary background information; exaggerating the importance of the work; claiming novelty without a proper literature search.

What is a "good" introduction?

This is where you describe briefly and clearly why you are authoring the paper. The introduction supplies sufficient background information for the reader to understand and evaluate the experiment you did. It also supplies a rationale for the study.

Goals:

• Present the problem and the proposed solution

• Presents nature and scope of the problem investigated

• Reviews the pertinent literature to orient the reader

• States the method of the experiment

• State the principal results of the experiment

The table below is the grading template used to evaluate the final report. Please refer to it often when you are ready to start writing your final report!