Spring 2019 materials for PQHS / CRSP / MPHP 432 (formerly called EPBI 432)
432 is the second part of a two-semester sequence (PQHS 431-432) taught by Professor Thomas Love in the Department of Population and Quantitative Health Sciences. He may be reached at Thomas dot Love at case dot edu.
- Tuesdays and Thursdays from 1 PM to 2:15 PM in Room E321-323 in the Robbins Building at the School of Medicine.
- Classes meet as listed on the Course Calendar. Our first session will be on Tuesday 2019-01-22, as Dr. Love is away the first week of the semester.
- Details on the Teaching Assistants and their Office Hours are provided in the Syllabus and at the bottom of the Course Calendar.
Welcome back those of you who took 431 with Dr. Love this past Fall. If you're newly joining us, welcome! To get a jump on things, prior to our first meeting on 2019-01-22, we encourage you to:
- Complete the necessary software updates described below.
- Please read Karl W. Broman and Kara H. Woo's paper "Data Organization in Spreadsheets" published in a special edition of The American Statistician dedicated to Data Science in 2018. A PDF version is available on our References page.
- Obtain (and read) Jeff Leek's short book "How to be a Modern Scientist" (recommended price $10). We will expect you to have finished the book by mid-February, but there's nothing to stop you from reading it at any time.
- There is no other book to buy this semester.
- The Course Calendar serves as the final word for all deadlines and will eventually provide links for all classes and deliverables.
- A draft of the Course Syllabus is now available. This should be complete by 2019-01-22.
- The Slides Page provides links to presentation materials and READMEs for each class session.
- Dr. Love's book of 432 Course Notes is now available.
- This is the principal textbook for the course, and will be updated occasionally during the semester.
- The website for the Fall 2018 version of the 431 course will remain available this term.
- Data and Code for the course are now available.
- Readings and Supplemental Materials appear on the References page.
- The Homework page provides details on the six planned homework assignments.
- The Projects page provides details on the two course projects you'll complete.
- The Quizzes page provides details on the two quizzes you'll take this term.
Deadlines for all deliverables are specified in the Course Calendar.
The course uses R, R Studio and R Markdown, as were used in 431-432. Get your software up to date on a laptop you can bring to class, for best results. We'll hope you have all of this done before the first class on 2019-01-22, but if you have problems, we can deal with them at that session. You'll need to have all of this accomplished in order to do your first homework assignment.
- Download R (R 3.5.2 or later) from https://cran.case.edu/. Everything should still work as long as you have version 3.5.0 or later, but it's best to start out in the same place as everyone else.
- Download R Studio Desktop (open source edition: version 1.1.463 or later is OK) from https://www.rstudio.com/products/rstudio/download/#download.
- Install the necessary R software packages we'll use.
- If you need additional installation instructions, we recommend using Dr. Love's 431 instructions, or these Stat 545 instructions.
- 432 is also supported by DataCamp, a terrific learning platform for data science. On 2018-08-30, I sent those of you who took 431 with me this Fall an invitation to join us in that community. Please do.
Starting 2019-01-22, contact Dr. Love (and the Teaching Assistants) by emailing 431-help at case dot edu. Yes, even though this is 432, we continue to use 431-help.
If you have questions about the course before our first class on 2019-01-22, email Dr. Love at Thomas dot Love at case dot edu.