HRP 223 - Data Management and Statistical Programming - 2009/2010 Edition

The goal of the course is to provide hands on instruction in data management and analysis techniques.
Topics discussed include:

1. Working with large databases - what makes a good database turn bad
2. Data cleaning techniques
3. Generating numerical and graphical presentations
4. Descriptive statistics

Contact information

Professor	Teaching Assistant(s)
Raymond R. Balise  Redwood Bldg. T213D, MC 5092  Stanford, California  94305-5405  Balise at Stanford  Voice (650) 724-2602  Fax (650) 725-6951	Kameelah Abdullah       kameelah at Stanford

Prerequisites

Admission to Health Research and Policy and a comfortable knowledge of a Windows XP/Vista.

Lectures                                                                                                             

Monday and Wednesday 11:30-1:00 Redwood Building T138B.

Office Hours

By appointment in Redwood Building T213D.  Directions can be found here: www.stanford.edu/~balise/FindBalise.htm

Newsgroup

If you would like to ask a question or help others please visit the course newsgroup which is named:  su.class.hrp223. While not truly required for the class, you will suffer if you don’t have access to the news.  If you do not know how to subscribe to a newsgroup and you use Windows http://www.stanford.edu/services/email/config/thunderbird/newsreader/pc/ or a Mac http://www.stanford.edu/services/email/config/thunderbird/newsreader/mac/. Screenshots of my setup can be found here: www.stanford.edu/class/hrp223/2008/newsgroup.ppt

Readings

The Little SAS Book for Enterprise Guide 4.1: http://www.sas.com/apps/pubscat/bookdetails.jsp?catid=1&pc=61054

SAS Programming for Enterprise Guide Users: http://www.sas.com/apps/pubscat/bookdetails.jsp?catid=1&pc=61179

The little SAS Book 3^rd Edition : http://www.sas.com/apps/pubscat/bookdetails.jsp?pc=59216

Optional Books

Common Statistical Methods for Clinical Research with SAS Examples: http://www.sas.com/apps/pubscat/bookdetails.jsp?catid=1&pc=58086

Grading

Grades will be based on four homework problem sets.   If you take the course for 2 units you must pass at least three of the four homework assignments and you must not violate the virus policy below.  If you take the course for 3 units you must pass all four assignments.  There will be many quick assignments that will not directly affect grades.

Turning in Homework and Viruses

All assignments and homework will be submitted via email to balise at stanford and lamiyas at stanford. Any student that sends me a virus (or any other malicious code) will fail the course.  There will be no exceptions made.  Therefore, you are strongly advised to download the latest version of the Sophos Anti-Virus software. If you need virus protection check here http://www.stanford.edu/services/ess/ and you can download the software for free. If you have any questions ask!

Late policy

Each of the assignments will be due at the beginning of class on the day specified.

That said, there are unforeseen emergencies (illness, bike accidents, disk crashes, network troubles, childbirth, etc.). Instead of having to ask for special allowances on an individual basis, I give each of you the privilege of granting yourself a small extension in case of crisis. You will have two late days which you may use to extend the due dates of any assignments without penalty. To avoid any ambiguity, there are seven days in a week and each day ends at 5:00 PM. Thus, if your assignment was due on Wednesday but turned in the following Monday before 5:00, that assignment would be five days late. After the grace period is up each assignment is down weighted 20% per day.  In all cases, assignments will not be accepted more than one calendar week after the original assignment due date.

Computer Platforms

The programs that you turn in must run on Windows SAS 9.2 TS2 and/or Enterprise Guide 4.2.  I can provide good support for Windows or a Mac running parallels (http://www.parallels.com/).

 

Core Lecture Material

Topic 0 Computing at Stanford and an Introduction to SAS Enterprise Guide (Sept 21^st)

Software somebody should have told you about a long time ago

            Essential Stanford Software (free stuff)

Tools of the trade

            Excel

REDCap

            SAS or SAS/Enterprise Guide instructions on installing SAS are here.

            R and Rcommander

Other software I use (not officially endorsed by anybody)

            UltraEdit

            UltraCompare

            FileLocator Pro

            MyInfo

Using SAS Enterprise Guide as a calculator

 

The PowerPoint slides are here.

Topic 1 Data and Data Collection (Sept 23^rd)

            What is a database?

Critical registry teaks for Excel

How to organize data in Excel

            Variable names

            Dummy records

Using Excel

            Making tables

            Validation

            Formulas

            Quick counts

            Subsets

            Random subsets

            Duplicates Discrepancies and Differences

            PivotTables    

Collecting data in general

            How to score and store answers

            The value/danger of redundancy

            Using REDCap

                        What is it?

                        How to set it up.

 

The PowerPoint slides are here for PowerPoint 2007 or here for PowerPoint 2003.

 

TLSBEG Tutorial A, Chapter1 especially 1.1-1.8

Topic 2 Working with data in Windows (Sept 28^th)

            Types of Files

Topic 3 (Sept 30^th)

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Topic 4 (Oct 5^th)

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Topic 5 (Oct 7^th)

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Topic 6 (Oct 12^th)

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Topic 7 (Oct 14^th)

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Topic 8 (Oct 19^th)

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Topic 9 (Oct 21^th)

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Topic 10 (Oct 26^th)

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Topic 11 (Oct 28^th)

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Topic 12 (Nov 2^nd)

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Topic 13 (Nov 9^th)

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Topic 14 (Nov 11^th)

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Topic 15 (Nov 16^th)

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Topic 16 (Nov 18^th)

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Topic 17 (Nov 30^th)

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Topic 18 (Dec 2^nd)

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Other stuff

A set of useful links can be found here.

A few of my old favorite books are listed here.

SAS 2009 keyboard macros can be found here.