Statistical Foundations and Data Visualization

4.0 credits

The course covers the essentials of the statistical foundations for interpretation and visualization of data. Using statistical tools, gain an understanding of how to interpret data quantitatively and to explore data-oriented structures. The primary focus is on descriptive statistics used to present and summarize numerical information. The course also emphasizes the design of systems for data visualization and related best practices for use in a healthcare setting. Course projects and assignments will involve accessing public healthcare data sources (e.g. MIMIC-III) or a deidentified data repository to extract relevant patient level attributes and create dashboards and visualizations to practice data storytelling for relevant healthcare problems. Students will be introduced to the R programming language which is a mainstay in statistical computing.