Workshop Description (Introductory Course)

Through this seminar, attendees will walk away knowing when and how to run modern versions of traditional statistical analysis. These tests and the underlying bioinformatical lesson about resampling will be of use to most scientific disciplines. The course makes no assumptions about familiarity with traditional statistics – we will simply go through relatable experimental examples and ask how to test various hypotheses, introducing the relevant methods along the way. There will be homework assignments each night to solidify the concepts from class. These are short and optional, but will allow advanced students to gain more of the class.

As we introduce modern methods, we will also address how to best deal with common questions in experimental analysis:

  • What tests can be applied to small sample sizes?
  • When can one assume linearity in the data?
  • What to do with non-Gaussian data / residuals?
  • How does one best detect and justify removing outliers?
  • Which estimators are appropriate with highly non-continuous samples?

Workshop Topics

  • Bootstrapping
  • Hypothesis testing

To access the workshop slides for day 1 – 3, click here.

  • Paired data
  • Correlations

To access the workshop slides for day 1 – 3, click here.

  • ANOVAs
  • Multiple comparison corrections

To access the workshop slides for day 1 – 3, click here.

Technical Requirements

  • Helpful to have A basic understanding of either MATLAB or R.
  • We strongly encourage attendees to bring a laptop capable of accessing UCLA’s WiFi.
  • You need to have MATLAB or R already installed PRIOR to class.

Instructor

Dr. Amelia Palermo is an assistant project scientist in the Graeber lab, at the UCLA David Geffen School of Medicine. Her research focuses on the identification of novel druggable targets of resistant cancer. Her overarching goal is to accelerate target discovery through systems biology and big data. She received her Ph.D. in pharmaceutical sciences working at Sapienza and ETH Zurich, and postdoctoral training from Scripps Research.
Email: apalermo@mednet.ucla.edu

Videos

Reviews

Don was a very enthusiastic and knowledgeable instructor. He really kept us engaged and made concepts clear. I very much appreciated his style of teaching. Rather than being taught to crunch out code, we were taught the fundamental statistical concepts which helps us to solve different problems, rather than only learning to do very particular tasks.

Thank you for your fantastic workshop. I going to go back to my own data analysis and double check my work with my newfound knowledge. Thank you so much!

Really great intro course into modern stats. I didn’t have much of a background in using R or coding, thus it was somewhat challenging for some questions. However, Don is a great instructor and made the topic very approachable for everyone. Would highly recommend!

Workshop Details

Prerequisites: Intro to R
Length: 3 days, 2 hrs per day
Level: Introductory
Location: Boyer 529
Seats Available: 28

Winter 2026 Dates

Jan. 27, Jan. 28 and Jan. 29
1:30PM – 4:30 PM

REGISTRATION IS NOT OPEN TO THE PUBLIC