Welcome! PQHS 431 is the first part of a two-semester sequence (PQHS 431-432) taught by Professor Thomas Love in the Department of Population and Quantitative Health Sciences at Case Western Reserve University. Everything that Professor Love will provide to help you with the course will appear on this website.

The class will be held on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 1:00 - 2:15 PM in Room E321-323 of the Robbins Building at the CWRU School of Medicine, starting on 2019-08-27.

• If you have questions before our first class on 2019-08-27, email Professor Love at Thomas dot Love at case dot edu.
• Starting 2019-08-27, contact Professor Love (and the Teaching Assistants) by emailing 431-help at case dot edu.

• The Course Syllabus
  • This includes details on Professor Love and the teaching assistants, software, the course texts, and more.
• The Course Calendar is the final word for all deadlines, and provides links for all deliverables and class sessions.
• Professor Love's Course Notes
  • This is the main textbook, and provides a series of examples of using R to work through issues that will likely come up in the course. Its current title is "Data Science for Biological, Medical and Health Research"
• Slides and other materials for each class will also be provided, with links to presentation materials and READMEs for each class session to be found in the Course Calendar.
  • Each class session begins with a review of that day's README, which contains links to Professor Love's slides, data sets we'll use in class, interesting tidbits from the news, and the internet, responses to student surveys, and various other materials.

• Software Installation and Tips to help you install R, RStudio and R packages, along with the data you'll need, and then to help you get rolling with those tools.
• Data (and Code) for the course's deliverables, presentations, and notes.
• Readings and Supplemental Materials I'll refer to during the course.

There are several types of assignments for this course, including regular "minute paper" surveys, more traditional "homework" Deliverables, a Course Project, and at least two Quizzes.

• Course Calendar (final word for all deadlines)
• The Homework page with Links for the Homework Assignments.
• The Course Project page
• The Quizzes page

1. Register for the course. Verify that I've gathered your information correctly on http://bit.ly/431-2019-roster-check, as well.
2. Fill out the "Welcome to 431" Survey at http://bit.ly/431-2019-welcome-survey.
3. We'll read two books this semester that you'll need to purchase (combined price is about $25):
   • Nate Silver, The Signal and the Noise ISBN-13: 978-1594204111 Amazon Link, and
   • Jeffrey Leek, The Elements of Data Analytic Style, available at https://leanpub.com/datastyle.
4. In the meantime, take a look at the course materials posted on this site, especially the key links below. Everything here is work in progress, with new materials are arriving regularly from now until the end of the course in December.

Learning R can be difficult at first - it’s like learning a new lanugage, just like Spanish, French, or Chinese. Hadley Wickham—the chief data scientist at RStudio and the author of some amazing R packages you’ll be using like ggplot2 made this wise observation:

It’s easy when you start out programming to get really frustrated and think, “Oh it’s me, I’m really stupid,” or, “I’m not made out to program.” But, that is absolutely not the case. Everyone gets frustrated. I still get frustrated occasionally when writing R code. It’s just a natural part of programming. So, it happens to everyone and gets less and less over time. Don’t blame yourself. Just take a break, do something fun, and then come back and try again later.

If you’re finding yourself taking way too long hitting your head against a wall and not understanding, take a break, talk to classmates, ask questions at 431-help at case dot edu, e-mail Dr. Love, etc.

I promise you can do this.

If you are a former student, or for some other reason need to see the 431 course in its previous iterations, contact Dr. Love via email.

• Some people will want to see the Fall 2018 version of the Course Notes, for instance.