The "Biological Data Analysis" course is the second of the 3 planned
courses in Bioinformatics field. The students are strongly encouraged
(but not obligatory) to plan to participate in all 3 courses.
The aim of the "Biological Data Analysis" course is to provide students
with basic knowledge and elementary skills needed for the statistical
analysis of biological data.
In the preparatory, distance-learning part of the course, students will
be asked to download the freeware package R and to practice simple
numerical and graphical tools for data description using this software.
R is very flexible software for biological data analysis; the number of
implemented methods is virtually unlimited (although only a small subset
of them will be covered during this course). The same software and its
extensions will also be used in the next, bioinformatics course.
The one-week face-to-face module will be held in Tartu, using the
facilities of the Faculty of Mathematics and Computer Sciences,
University of Tartu. First, the concepts of randomness, random sampling
and sampling variability will be introduced. Drawing conclusions from
the data, while taking into account uncertainty, is based on confidence
intervals and statistical hypothesis testing. Their general principles
will be seen together with practical examples of data analysis in R.
Next, some methods for exploring and testing associations in the data
will be considered: simple two-sample tests, basic statistical models,
such as (simple and multivariate) linear regression and analysis of
variance. Finally, some tools for dimensionality reduction and cluster
analysis will be explored. The practical exercises sessions will be held
in a computer lab.
The course will consist of:
- distance learning part - 1 month before the course students will
get the prereading and some exercises;
- face-to-face part, where lectures by the Estonian and Norwegian
teachers are given as well as the practical sessions in computer lab
are carried out.
