Biostats uOttawa

This site regroup the different resources developed for the biostatistic courses at the university of Ottawa by Julien Martin

Biostatistic courses at uOttawa

Applied biostatistics with R (Bio4x58 / Bio5x58)

  • Offered to both undergraduate (Bio4x58) and graduate students (Bio5x58) in english (Bio4158 / Bio5158) and french (Bio4558 / Bio5558)
  • Content:
    • Foundations of statistics (distributions, CIs, p-values, central limit theorem, Bayesian thinking, …)
    • linear models (t-test, ANOVA, regression, ANCOVA, general linear model)
    • Intro to R and then everything done in R
  • Prerequisite:
    • an introduction class to statistics is needed (MAT279 or equivalent is required)
    • No (or limited) knowledge of R and no (or limited) knowledge of stats expected.
  • Course sites: BioX158: english / BioX558: french
  • Book On the R-way to hell / Sur le chemin de l’enf-R is used as course manual with course specific chapters indicated in the table and on course website.

Advanced biostatistics and open science (BIO 8940)

  • Bilingual course for graduate students
  • Content:
    • Brief revision of linear models (assume to be known and a prerequisite)
    • Generalized linear model
    • Mixed models (lmm and glmm)
    • Bayesian approach
    • Everything done in R
    • Quarto / Rmarkdown
  • Prerequisite:
    • a functional knowledge of R (loading data, running basic linear models, and making plots)
    • a good understanding of linear models
    • essentially Bio8940 is a great next steps after completing Bio4x58.
  • Course site
  • Book On the R-way to hell / Sur le chemin de l’enf-R is used as course manual with course specific chapters indicated in the table and on course website.

Book and tutorials

Statistics with R: On the R-way to hell

This is an introduction to statistics and R book with a multilingual approach. The book is covering an introduction to the basic use of R (data loading, wrangling and plotting), as well as programming, use of github and R markdown /Quarto with R Studio and VS code. It then covers a lot of statistical subjects.

The book (still under development) is available in English and French. I will add more languages later this year hopefully with help of volunteers.

How to fit an animal model

The book is tutorial on how to fit an animal model using multiple R packages. This is essentially an updated and extended version of the tutorials from “An ecologist guide to animal model” paper by Wilson et al. (2010).

Statistical consulting

As Part of my service in the Biology department, I provide statistical consulting. Please just contact me to book an appointment to discuss your stat problems.

Please bring with you (or send me in advance):

  • your data
  • your R code (should at least load the data into R)
  • a clear working hypothesis

Statistical consulting does not mean that you have to add me as a co-author. I just ask that you add me to the “Acknowledgements” of your thesis and manuscript/article. Repeated consulting on the same problem and my implication on developing project specific coding/analysis might lead to co-authorship, but this usually all comes naturally and is always discussed openly with the student(s) and PI(s). As yet, I have never requested to become a co-author and I was offered co-authorship for 3 manuscripts over > 50 projects discussed.

Quarto templates for reproducible science

A few quarto templates I developed to facilitate open-science for students at uOttawa

  • bio-uo-proposal:
    quarto extension providing 1 new pdf output format (bio-uo-proposal-pdf). I am working on a docx version but tweaking the frontpage is tricky with word document.

  • bio-uo-thesis:
    quarto extension providing two new output formats for book projects: an html (bio-uo-thesis-html) and a pdf (bio-uo-thesis-pdf) generating a website (to be hosted on github pages or similar) and a pdf of the thesis adequately formatted for uOttawa (at least biology)

References

Wilson, A. J., D. Réale, M. N. Clements, M. M. Morrissey, E. Postma, C. A. Walling, L. E. B. Kruuk, and D. H. Nussey. 2010. An ecologist’s guide to the animal model. Journal of Animal Ecology 79:13–26.