Everything that follows is based on a simple set of premises:
Answers to important research questions in medicine and health often rely on quantitative data.
Designing studies to generate useful quantitative data requires expertise. The same goes for analyzing the data and interpreting the results.
Statisticians and epidemiologists often have the expertise to contribute to the design, analysis and interpretation of quantitative health research data, but there are very few of them around.
This means that many or most researchers working in medicine and health have to serve as their own statistician, whether they realize it or not.
Failure to take this responsibility seriously can lead to otherwise avoidable research waste, as flaws in study design, analysis and interpretation can render research results useless, or even harmful.
Primum non nocere, or GTFO
Your-Own-Statistician is an informal, weekly, online meet-up aimed at supporting post-graduate students in the College of Medicine and Health at University College Cork to develop and maintain their quantitative data skills.
Meet-ups will be on Friday mornings at 10:30-11:30 via Teams (and occasionally in person). You are welcome to attend as you are able. You do not need to RSVP, and you do not need to let me know when you can’t make it :)
General topics will include:
Statistical and causal inference
Study design and data analysis planning
Evaluation of clinical prediction models/algorithms
Reproducible statistical programming with R and RStudio
Data visualisation
Data management and stewardship
The meet-up format will rotate through:
Training seminars/tutorials
Data analysis “show-and-tells”
Open Q&A and troubleshooting sessions
Article discussions
This website will be used to share materials. It is obviously an ongoing work in progress.