Postgraduate - UnitEPM5002 - Mathematical background for biostatistics

This unit entry is for students who completed this unit in 2015 only. For students planning to study the unit, please refer to the unit indexes in the the current edition of the Handbook. If you have any queries contact the managing faculty for your course or area of study.

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6 points, SCA Band 2, 0.125 EFTSL

Refer to the specific census and withdrawal dates for the semester(s) in which this unit is offered.

Level	Postgraduate
Faculty	Faculty of Medicine, Nursing and Health Sciences
Organisational Unit	Department of Epidemiology and Preventive Medicine
Offered	Alfred Hospital First semester 2015 (Off-campus) Alfred Hospital Second semester 2015 (Off-campus)
Coordinator(s)	Associate Professor Gary Glonek

Synopsis

Core topics in algebra and analysis, including polynomial and simultaneous equations, graphs, concepts of limits, continuity and series approximations, including Taylor series expansions. Calculus is used to describe techniques of integration and differentiation of vector expressions. Study of probability, concepts of probability laws, random variables, expectation and distributions. Essential topics in matrix algebra relevant to biostatistical methods. Essential numerical methods, including Newton-Raphson method for solution of simultaneous equations and concepts of numerical integration.

Outcomes

Upon successful completion of this unit, students should be able to:

demonstrate a broad understanding of the mathematics underlying key statistical methods;
demonstrate an understanding of basic algebra and analysis, and the ability to manually differentiate and integrate algebraic expressions, and perform Taylor series expansions;
understand the basic laws of probability, and the calculus basis of expectation and distribution theory;
perform matrix manipulations manually;
understand the numerical methods behind solutions of equations regularly encountered in methods in biostatistics.