Statistical Practice in Epidemiology using R.

Course from Thursday 1 to Tuesday 6 June 2017 Tartu, Estonia

Organized by the Estonian Genome center and the Institute of Mathematics and Statistics, University of Tartu
The course starts early morning Thursday, so arrival in Tartu must be on Wednesday 31 May. The course ends at 14:00, so departure will be possible on Tuesday 6 (flights from Tallinn later than 18:00 can be reached).
Similar courses were given every year since 2000 with the exception of 2003 and 2008.

Audience

The course is intended for epidemiologists and statisticians who wish to use R for statistical modelling and analysis of epidemiological data.
The aim of the course is to give young statisticians (or not so young epidemiologists) who wish to enter or who has recently entered biostatistics or epidemiology access to a set of tools in current use by statisticians in epidemiology.
The course requires basic knowledge of epidemiological concepts and study types. These will only be briefly reviewed, whereas the more advanced epidemiological and statistical concepts will be treated in depth.

The kissing students outside the town hall of Tartu

History of R. Language. Objects. Functions.
Interface to other dataformats. Dataframes.
Tabulation of data.
Logistic regression for case-control-studies.
Poisson regression for follow-up studies.
Causal inference.
Parametrization of models.
Graphics in R.
Graphical reporting of results.
Time-splitting & SMR.
Nested and matched case-control studies.
Case-cohort studies.
Survival analysis in continuous time.
Competing risk models and relative survival.
Multistate models.

All methods will be thoroughly illustrated using R in practical exercises.
The Epi package which is developed for epidemiological analysis in R will be introduced. Particular attention will be given to the reporting of the results; in particular the use of graphics.

Faculty:

Krista Fischer, Senior researcher, Estonian Genome Center, University of Tartu, Estonia.

Esa Läärä, Professor of Biometry, Department of Mathematical Sciences, University of Oulu, Finland.
Janne Pitkäniemi, Chief Statistician, Finnish Cancer Registry, Helsinki, Finland & Department of Public Health, University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland .
Bendix Carstensen, Senior Statistician, Steno Diabetes Center, Gentofte & Department of Biostatistics, University of Copenhagen, Denmark. Maintainer of the Epi package.
Martyn Plummer, Senior Statistician, International Agency for Research on Cancer, Lyon, France. Member of the R core team.

$Mathematics building, University of Tartu, J Liivi 2$

Assistants:

Kristi Läll, Silva Kasela

Venue

Institute of Mathematics and Statistics, J Liivi 2.

Course fee:

700 EUR (academic); 950 EUR (non-academic)
Includes course, course material, lunch, coffee breaks and social events.
Excludes transport, accomodation and dinner.
The course is a self-supporting entity, and there are NO grants or stipends available for travel or participation.

Course program and instructions:

Program with time table here
Practicals here
Slides here, and as 3-ups or 8-ups.
Maps of the venue: detailed and larger scale.
Download the latest version of R 3.4.0 (here, for example), and install it.
Install the R-package Epi, version 2.15 (soon to come in windows version) from here or by starting R and then typing:
> install.packages("Epi")
at the command prompt in R. If you have an older version of Epi, then update to 2.15. This requires that your computer is connected to the net.
The latest version 2.15 is not yet in the windows version on CRAN, but you can get it from here and install it.
Install the R-packages mgcv, data.table, popEpi and epitools by starting R and then typing:
> install.packages("mgcv")
> install.packages("data.table")
> install.packages("popEpi")
> install.packages("epitools")
at the command prompt in R. This requires that your computer is connected to the net.
It may also be of interest to install the package eha too.
If you are not very familiar with R, here is a draft version of a short introduction to R, aimed at an uninitiated audience.
Concepts in survival and demography is a brief account of basic concepts and their relationships.
Spline demonstration written by Paul Lambert, University of Leicester.

Transport and getting around in Tartu

Tartu is situated 185 km south-east of the Estonian captal Tallinn. Transportation is by air (or sea from Helsinki) to Tallinn and from there approximately 2.5 hrs. by bus or train. The bus calls at Tallinn airport, the train can be boarded at Ülemiste station, close to the airport.
There is also an airport in Tartu, though thinly serviced.
For more information on transport to and around Tartu, look here.

Last updated 30 May 2017, BxC