Danish Cancer Society, 15-26
August 2022
Course text Book:
The textbook for the summer course: "Cancer Epidemiology: Principles
and Methods" by Isabel dos Santos Silva. IARC 1999. It can be
downloaded for free from IARC,
here.
You do not have to read the textbook before the course, but you may
want to look into it before the course. If you want a printed copy,
please print this yourself beforehand, as it will not be possible to
print during the course.
Measures of Disease Occurrence: Tuesday 16, Wednesday 17
Analysis of Epidemiological Data: Tuesday 23, Wednesday 24
Esa Läärä, Bendix Carstensen, Thomas Maltesen
- Lectures:
- Measures of Disease Frequency and Effects
16-17 August 2022
(Bendix Carstensen)
- Analysis of Epidemiological Data
23-24 August 2022
(Esa Läärä)
- Practical exercises
- The exercises in this course requires you to do calculations which
(at least in principle) can be done on a hand-calculator.
However we guess you do not have a hand calculator, and assume that
you have a laptop and therefore can use the free statistical program
R
as a calculator. This will enable you to take the solutions with you
home in the form of a file with computer code that does the
analyses. It will also enable you to do analyses repeatedly on
slightly different sets of data.
- You can obtain
R
from CRAN (the
Comprehensive
R
Archive
Network):
Under
"Download and Install R" click on
"R for Windows", click on
"Install R for the first time", and then on
"Download R 4.2.1 for Windows", which is a
self-extracting installer. This means that if you save it
to your computer somewhere and click on it, it will install
R
for you (provided that you answer the questions you are asked).
- The Epi add-on package for
R
will be needed too. Once you have installed
R
, start it, and in the menu bar click on
Packages -> Install package(s)..., chose a
mirror (this is just a server where you can get the stuff), and then
the Epi package.
Start
R
and write:
> library(Epi)
> sessionInfo()
- from the output of the last command it should be clear that you have
R version 4.2.1 (or later) and
version 2.47 of the Epi package.
- Practical Exercises
contains the exercises that you will go through during the
practicals sessions in the two modules "Measures of disease
frequency and effects" and "Analysis of Epidemiological Data".
It also contains a very short introduction to getting and using
R,
and a section with basic probability concepts in epidemiology and
demography.
- This
folder contains a number of R-scripts relating to the
practicals. Hopefully the filenames are informative.
- An
introduction to R for Epidemiology may be of interest for
you (about 50 pages).
- NORDCAN is
an interactive database where you can get information on cancer
occurrence in the Nordic countries. It will also be used during the
exercises.
- After the course
You can have more information about the
Epi package for
R
here.
You can enhance your
R
skills by attending the
course Statistical Practice
in Epidemiology with R (in 2023, though).
For more advanced studies you may be interested in looking at the book
"Epidemiology with R" by Bendix Carstensen
- Previous courses, lectures, slides etc.
Last updated 21 July 2022, BxC