Epidemiology with
R
by Bendix Carstensen
Senior Statistician at Steno Diabetes Center Copenhagen
The purpose of the book is to show how to
use R in standard
Epidemiology, mainly chronic disease epidemiology.
The book demonstrates analysis
through R code, but your
benefit will not be overwhelming if you do not try the code by
yourself, preferably by modifying it to see what happens. To that end,
the entire code shown in the book is available for you online, see
below.
However, (quoted from the preface of the book): "If you know nothing
about epidemiology, find a book on epidemiology before embarking on
this book. If you know absolutely nothing about statistics, you may
have a hard time with this book, even if the formal prerequisites are
small."
The book has grown out of the course
Statistical Practice in
Epidemiology with R that I have been teaching since 2004 together
with my colleagues Michael Hills, Martyn Plummer, Esa Läärä, Lyle
Gurrin, Krista Fischer, Mark Myatt, Janne Pitkäniemi, Damien Georges
and Peter Dalgaard; usually 5 of us at a time. But there is not a
one-to-one correspondence between book and course, and neither are
anyone but me responsible for the content of the book.
The
Epi package
The course Statistical Practice in
Epidemiology with R resulted in the launch of the
Epi package in 2005, and
many extensions and improvements since then. Functions from the
Epi package are extensively
used in the book, so you will need to install it.
On the package website are links to the vignettes from the
Epi package; they provide
more examples and code of relevance.
The code in the book works with
Epi version 2.41. The
current version is 2.44, and I have found no errors using this
version. I will try to make the necessary changes in the code, should
newer versions of the Epi
package necessitate this.
R code from the book
The code from each chapter is here, but with pretty
arcane file names, so perhaps more
accessible via the chapter headings:
In the chapter 'Using R' a
dataset fem is used; it is
available in different formats here
Contact and feed back
If you have comments or suggestions for
the book you can mail me at b@bxc.dk.
Nobody is perfect
...neither is the book nor its author, so here is a
lits of errata
If you find bugs or blunders in the book I will be happy to be
notified.
Last updated 25 May 2021, BxC