Methods in Mathematics and Statistics

The general objective of the course is to develop in the student the critical ability to evaluate the scientific evidence in support of biomedicine for prevention, diagnosis, treatment and rehabilitation with reference to the integration of laboratory tests for diagnosis, practical efficacy of the therapy, and of prognostic indicators.
In the student's training process, the acquisition of this ability contributes, from an ethical and deontological perspective, to the construction of a mental habitus capable of integrating the knowledge produced by good biomedical and clinical research into the cultural and professional sphere. A habit that is now considered necessary for all professions related to basic and applied biomedical research together with the processes of health technology assessment (HTA).
As specific objectives, the course aims to develop the knowledge and skills related to:
i)statistical methods that make it possible to describe and evaluate the different sources of variability;
ii)diagnostic tests and related measures of reliability and diagnostic relevance;
iii)basic principles of planning observational studies, interpretation of disease occurrence measures and the association between risk factors and disease occurrence;
iv)the relationships between statistics and the foundations of the inductive / deductive scientific method for empirical research, with reference to the planning of observation and experimental studies and methods of statistical inference;
v)basic principles of ethics and the relationship with the methodology of biomedical research with specific reference to experimental studies of therapeutic efficacy.

The course aims to provide the methodological tools needed to learn, apply and evaluate, through critical analysis of the medical literature:
-the concepts of reliability, accuracy and precision, repeatability and reproducibility of the measures;
-the usefulness of diagnostic tests and prognostic indexes;
-measures of disease occurrence and association with risk/benefit factors in epidemiology/clinical research;
-the identification of sources of imprecision and inaccuracy in epidemiological / clinical studies;
-the difference between studies based on observation and experimentation together with the main study designs in epidemiology / clinical research for the assessment of causal relationships, with reflection on the ethical aspects of biomedical research
-the effectiveness of therapies, rehabilitation practices, prevention programs, reported by observational and experimental studies.