Data Analysis for Life Sciences

Harvard University via edX Professional Certificate

Overview

Technological advances have transformed fields that rely on data by providing a wealth of information ready to be analyzed. From working with single genes to comparing entire genomes, biomedical research groups around the world are producing more data than they can handle and the ability to interpret this information is a key skill for any practitioner. The skills necessary to work with these massive datasets are in high demand, and this series will help you learn those skills.

Using the open-source R programming language, you’ll gain a nuanced understanding of the tools required to work with complex life sciences and genomics data. You’ll learn the mathematical concepts — and the data analytics techniques — that you need to drive data-driven research. From a strong foundation in statistics to specialized R programming skills, this series will lead you through the data analytics landscape step-by-step.

Taught by Rafael Irizarry from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, these courses will enable new discoveries and will help you improve individual and population health. If you’re working in the life sciences and want to learn how to analyze data, enroll now to take your research to the next level.

Syllabus

Courses under this program:
Course 1: Statistics and R

An introduction to basic statistical concepts and R programming skills necessary for analyzing data in the life sciences.

Course 2: Introduction to Linear Models and Matrix Algebra

Learn to use R programming to apply linear models to analyze data in life sciences.

Course 3: Statistical Inference and Modeling for High-throughput Experiments

A focus on the techniques commonly used to perform statistical inference on high throughput data.

Course 4: High-Dimensional Data Analysis

A focus on several techniques that are widely used in the analysis of high-dimensional data.

Courses

3 reviews
4 weeks, 2-4 hours a week, 2-4 hours a week
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If you’re interested in data analysis and interpretation, then this is the data science course for you. We start by learning the mathematical definition of distance and use this to motivate the use of the singular value decomposition (SVD) for dimension reduction of high-dimensional data sets, and multi-dimensional scaling and its connection to principle component analysis. We will learn about the batch effect, the most challenging data analytical problem in genomics today, and describe how the techniques can be used to detect and adjust for batch effects. Specifically, we will describe the principal component analysis and factor analysis and demonstrate how these concepts are applied to data visualization and data analysis of high-throughput experimental data.

Finally, we give a brief introduction to machine learning and apply it to high-throughput, large-scale data. We describe the general idea behind clustering analysis and descript K-means and hierarchical clustering and demonstrate how these are used in genomics and describe prediction algorithms such as k-nearest neighbors along with the concepts of training sets, test sets, error rates and cross-validation.

Given the diversity in educational background of our students we have divided the series into seven parts. You can take the entire series or individual courses that interest you. If you are a statistician you should consider skipping the first two or three courses, similarly, if you are biologists you should consider skipping some of the introductory biology lectures. Note that the statistics and programming aspects of the class ramp up in difficulty relatively quickly across the first three courses. By the third course will be teaching advanced statistical concepts such as hierarchical models and by the fourth advanced software engineering skills, such as parallel computing and reproducible research concepts.

These courses make up two Professional Certificates and are self-paced:

Data Analysis for Life Sciences:
Genomics Data Analysis:
This class was supported in part by NIH grant R25GM114818.
20 reviews
4 weeks, 2-4 hours a week, 2-4 hours a week
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This course teaches the R programming language in the context of statistical data and statistical analysis in the life sciences.

We will learn the basics of statistical inference in order to understand and compute p-values and confidence intervals, all while analyzing data with R code. We provide R programming examples in a way that will help make the connection between concepts and implementation. Problem sets requiring R programming will be used to test understanding and ability to implement basic data analyses. We will use visualization techniques to explore new data sets and determine the most appropriate approach. We will describe robust statistical techniques as alternatives when data do not fit assumptions required by the standard approaches. By using R scripts to analyze data, you will learn the basics of conducting reproducible research.

Given the diversity in educational background of our students we have divided the course materials into seven parts. You can take the entire series or individual courses that interest you. If you are a statistician you should consider skipping the first two or three courses, similarly, if you are biologists you should consider skipping some of the introductory biology lectures. Note that the statistics and programming aspects of the class ramp up in difficulty relatively quickly across the first three courses. We start with simple calculations and descriptive statistics. By the third course will be teaching advanced statistical concepts such as hierarchical models and by the fourth advanced software engineering skills, such as parallel computing and reproducible research concepts.

These courses make up two Professional Certificates and are self-paced:

Data Analysis for Life Sciences:
Genomics Data Analysis:
This class was supported in part by NIH grant R25GM114818.
12 reviews
4 weeks, 2-4 hours a week, 2-4 hours a week
View details
Matrix Algebra underlies many of the current tools for experimental design and the analysis of high-dimensional data. In this introductory online course in data analysis, we will use matrix algebra to represent the linear models that commonly used to model differences between experimental units. We perform statistical inference on these differences. Throughout the course we will use the R programming language to perform matrix operations.

Given the diversity in educational background of our students we have divided the series into seven parts. You can take the entire series or individual courses that interest you. If you are a statistician you should consider skipping the first two or three courses, similarly, if you are biologists you should consider skipping some of the introductory biology lectures. Note that the statistics and programming aspects of the class ramp up in difficulty relatively quickly across the first three courses. You will need to know some basic stats for this course. By the third course will be teaching advanced statistical concepts such as hierarchical models and by the fourth advanced software engineering skills, such as parallel computing and reproducible research concepts.

These courses make up two Professional Certificates and are self-paced:

Data Analysis for Life Sciences:
Genomics Data Analysis:
This class was supported in part by NIH grant R25GM114818.
4 reviews
4 weeks, 2-4 hours a week, 2-4 hours a week
View details
In this course you’ll learn various statistics topics including multiple testing problem, error rates, error rate controlling procedures, false discovery rates, q-values and exploratory data analysis. We then introduce statistical modeling and how it is applied to high-throughput data. In particular, we will discuss parametric distributions, including binomial, exponential, and gamma, and describe maximum likelihood estimation. We provide several examples of how these concepts are applied in next generation sequencing and microarray data. Finally, we will discuss hierarchical models and empirical bayes along with some examples of how these are used in practice. We provide R programming examples in a way that will help make the connection between concepts and implementation.

Given the diversity in educational background of our students we have divided the series into seven parts. You can take the entire series or individual courses that interest you. If you are a statistician you should consider skipping the first two or three courses, similarly, if you are biologists you should consider skipping some of the introductory biology lectures. Note that the statistics and programming aspects of the class ramp up in difficulty relatively quickly across the first three courses. By the third course will be teaching advanced statistical concepts such as hierarchical models and by the fourth advanced software engineering skills, such as parallel computing and reproducible research concepts.

These courses make up two Professional Certificates and are self-paced:

Data Analysis for Life Sciences:
Genomics Data Analysis:
This class was supported in part by NIH grant R25GM114818.