BST430 Lecture 0: Introduction

Seong-Hwan Jun based on notes of Andrew McDavid

U of Rochester

2025-08-27

Administrivia

Class website: junseonghwan.github.io/teaching/bst430_fall25/

• Instructor email: seonghwan_jun@urmc.rochester.edu
• For assignments, you are encouraged to use github issues (to be discussed).
• For private matters (grading disputes, etc), use email.

Textbooks

All materials are available freely online.

• Wickham & Grolemund “R for Data Science (2e)”: Excellent starter textbook. Be aware: there is a first edition of this book with very similar URL.
• Wickham “Advanced R”: for deeper understanding of the internals of R.
• Holmes & Huber “Modern Statistics for Modern Biology”: biostatistics and bioinformatics applications.
• Wickham “R Packages (2e)”: developing a package for reusability.

Overview

Part I: R and reproducible programming. 75% of the grades will come from Part I.

• 4 Homework Assignments (40%): to be completedindependently, out-of-class.
• 10 Labs (20%): in-class and may be completed in groups.
• Participation (10%): in-class quizzes and exercises.
• Take-home final (30%): an open book, no-collaboration-permitted final to be assigned on November 4, and will be due 24 hours later.

Part II: SAS programming accounts for the remaining 25%.

Academic honesty and programming

1. You may generally discuss problems with each other.
2. You may generally use google, but cite your sources.
3. Write your own solutions and own code. This generally means no copy-paste and no AI generated solutions! Refer to the syllabus on the course website for complete details.
4. Exception: labs, which will be marked as such, are collaborative within each group.
5. No discussion allowed for take-home final.

Code of conduct

Respect each other: Student handbook.

The UR harassment and discrimination policy.

Course outline

See course outline for more details.