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DEGREE REGULATIONS & PROGRAMMES OF STUDY 2022/2023

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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 Co-requisites
Prohibited Combinations Other requirements Prior knowledge of basic concepts of probability and statistics is recommended
Information for Visiting Students
Pre-requisitesVisiting students are advised to check that they have studied the material covered in the syllabus of each prerequisite course before enrolling.
High Demand Course? Yes
Course Delivery Information
Academic year 2022/23, Available to all students (SV1) Quota:  None
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)2:00
Learning Outcomes
On completion of this course, the student will be able to:
  1. Understand setting and complications related to using and analysing biomedical data.
  2. Discriminate between interpretable and black-box models.
  3. Manipulate, impute and filter data to setup correctly validated predictive models and construct predictive features.
  4. Understand and solve difficulties related to using high-dimensional data.
  5. 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 the Course Organiser.
KeywordsBDS,biomedical,data science
Contacts
Course organiserDr Joerg Kalcsics
Tel: (0131 6)50 5953
Email: Joerg.Kalcsics@ed.ac.uk
Course secretaryMiss Gemma Aitchison
Tel: (0131 6)50 9268
Email: Gemma.Aitchison@ed.ac.uk
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