Education and Training

23 to 29 May 2013

R is a language and environment for statistical analysis and graphics. R provides a wide variety of statistical and graphical techniques, and is highly extensible. The course “Statistical Practice in Epidemiology with R” is an introduction to R for epidemiologists with the aim of showing how common epidemiological analyses can be carried out in R. The course also covers a selection of more advanced topics showing the power of the R language.

The course is intended for epidemiologists and statisticians who wish to use R for statistical modelling and analysis of data in cancer epidemiology. The course requires basic knowledge of epidemiological concepts and study types. These will only be briefly reviewed, whereas the more advanced epidemiological and statistical concepts will be treated in depth.

Topics to be covered in the course include

• History of R. Language. Objects. Functions.
• Interface to other data formats. Data frames.
• Tabulation of data.
• Logistic regression for case-control-studies.
• Poisson regression for follow-up studies.
• Causal inference.
• Parametrization of models.
• Graphics in R.
• Graphical reporting of results.
• Time-splitting & Standardized Mortality Ratios.
• Survival analysis and competing risks.
• Nested and matched case-control studies.
• Case-cohort studies.

The "Statistical Practice in Epidemiology" course has been running since 2002 in Tartu, Estonia. The faculty for the 2013 course are:

• Bendix Carstensen, Senior Statistician, Steno Diabetes Center, Gentofte & Department of Biostatistics, University of Copenhagen, Denmark. Maintainer of the Epi package for R

• Krista Fischer, Senior Researcher, Estonian Genome Center, University of Tartu, Estonia.

• Esa Läärä, Professor of Biometry, Department of Mathematical Sciences, University of Oulu, Finland.

• Martyn Plummer, Statistician, International Agency for Research on Cancer,Lyon, France. Member of the R core team.

Participants should bring their own (Wi-Fi enabled) laptop. Windows, Linux and Mac OS X are all supported.


Upon completion of the course, each participant will receive a certificate of participation. There is no formal examination.


Course Fee: There is one universal fee of €600 for the course, which includes course materials and tea/coffee at each break. The course fee also includes an official dinner. Participants will be responsible for the cost of travel and accommodation.


Participants will be responsible for obtaining a visa for France, if required. IARC will provide them with an invitation letter to facilitate this process. Successful applicants will be sent a list of hotels and residences in Lyon and will be responsible for booking their own accommodation.

Fill in the online application form.  The deadline for applications is 1 April 2013.

Further information about the course schedule can be found at the SPE home page.

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION, PLEASE CONTACT:

 IARC Courses Programme
 International Agency for Research on Cancer
 150 cours Albert Thomas
 F-69008 Lyon
 France
 Tel: +33 4 72 73 80 72
 Fax: +33 4 72 73 80 80
 E-mail:
 Website: www.iarc.fr