THE UNIVERSITY of EDINBURGH

DEGREE REGULATIONS & PROGRAMMES OF STUDY 2017/2018

University Homepage
DRPS Homepage
DRPS Search
DRPS Contact
DRPS : Course Catalogue : School of Mathematics : Mathematics

Postgraduate Course: Biomedical Data Science (MATH11174)

Course Outline
SchoolSchool of Mathematics CollegeCollege of Science and Engineering
Credit level (Normal year taken)SCQF Level 11 (Postgraduate) AvailabilityAvailable to all students
SCQF Credits10 ECTS Credits5
SummaryThis course will introduce and discuss a large variety of situations that arise in the analysis of biomedical data through examples and assignments carried out in R. Starting from the ground up, we will be building a collection of well-written scripts and functions to perform increasingly sophisticated analyses, with an eye on reproducible research, self-documenting code, correctness of procedure, interpretability of results, and presentation of outcomes of the analysis.
Course description The biomedical setting is rich in opportunities to apply mathematical approaches of different types to the analysis of patient data. These range from routine data collected from national registries, to collections of high-dimensional biomarkers measured via high-throughput techniques, to genetic and sequence data.
Most often the data measured is noisy and fragmented. Moreover, it is more and more likely that the number of observations available is far exceeded by the number of variables and features available. These are important challenges when trying to use data-driven approaches in understanding the data and building predictive models.
The de-facto standard programming language adopted in analysing biomedical data is the free statistical language R. This
provides a flexible way to perform all types of analyses, from the simplest to the most complex, thanks to an extensive collection of packages.
Entry Requirements (not applicable to Visiting Students)
Pre-requisites Students MUST have passed: Fundamentals of Optimization (MATH11111)
Co-requisites
Prohibited Combinations Other requirements None
Information for Visiting Students
Pre-requisitesNone
High Demand Course? Yes
Course Delivery Information
Academic year 2017/18, Available to all students (SV1) Quota:  40
Course Start Semester 2
Timetable Timetable
Learning and Teaching activities (Further Info) Total Hours: 100 ( Lecture Hours 10, Seminar/Tutorial Hours 5, Supervised Practical/Workshop/Studio Hours 10, Programme Level Learning and Teaching Hours 2, Directed Learning and Independent Learning Hours 73 )
Assessment (Further Info) Written Exam 50 %, Coursework 50 %, Practical Exam 0 %
Additional Information (Assessment) Coursework 50%, Examination 50%.
Feedback Not entered
Exam Information
Exam Diet Paper Name Hours & Minutes
Main Exam Diet S2 (April/May)Biomedical Data Science (MATH11174)1:30
Learning Outcomes
On completion of this course, the student will be able to:
  1. Ability to understand setting and complications related to using and analysing biomedical data.
  2. Ability to discriminate between interpretable and black-box models.
  3. Ability to manipulate, impute and filter data to setup correctly validated predictive models and construct predictive features.
  4. Ability to understand and solve difficulties related to using high-dimensional data.
  5. Ability to write well-written and modular R code.
Reading List
An introduction to statistical learning, by G. James, D. Witten, T. Hastie and R. Tibshirani.
Introductory statistics with R, by P. Dalgaard.
Additional Information
Graduate Attributes and Skills Not entered
Special Arrangements Priority for this course will be given to students studying relevant masters programmes in the School of Mathematics. Students from other Schools will be admitted if space permits. Please contact Julian Hall.
KeywordsBDS,biomedical,data science
Contacts
Course organiserMr Marco Colombo
Tel:
Email: M.Colombo@ed.ac.uk
Course secretaryMrs Frances Reid
Tel: (0131 6)50 4883
Email: f.c.reid@ed.ac.uk
Navigation
Help & Information
Home
Introduction
Glossary
Search DPTs and Courses
Regulations
Regulations
Degree Programmes
Introduction
Browse DPTs
Courses
Introduction
Humanities and Social Science
Science and Engineering
Medicine and Veterinary Medicine
Other Information
Combined Course Timetable
Prospectuses
Important Information