This course provides an overview of the fundamentals of quantitative medicine. The principles of biomedical research are discussed and how these together form the building blocks towards evidence-based medicine. There will be thorough discussion on how to quantify disease occurrence, how to compare disease occurrence across groups, how to design a study, and how biases can impact properinferences from a study. The lectures will be illustrated with examples taken from the contemporary scientific literature.

The format of the course includes lectures, interactive discussions in small groups of 2-3 students, quizzes, and daily break-out working sessions of 15-20 students.

This course is of interest to anyone working in quantitative research. It will be of particular interest to students starting their research career or those who have experience in research outside of epidemiology. After successful completion of this course, students will be ready to engage in further (intermediate) level training in epidemiology.

Objectives

After successful completion of this course, students will:

• understand the various measures of disease frequency

• be able to properly interpret the various measures of association in epidemiological research

• be able to judge the methodological merits of a study, with respect to aspects of precision and validity

• know basic analytical approaches in observational and experimental studies

Assessment