STATS 540 TA

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Professors Jenny Bryan and Paul Pavlidis are seeking a teaching assistant for the Winter
2012 term (January-April).

An overview of the course:

STAT 540: Statistical Methods for High Dimensional Biology

When: 2012 Term 2 MW 9:30-11, plus a one-hour section Wednesdays at 12
Prerequisite: An undergraduate statistics course or instructor permission. The material is
designed to be accessible to graduate students in statistics, bioinformatics, GSAT and
other programs in the biological sciences.

The course is designed for researchers who want to know how to analyze large data sets
arising from biological studies. The emphasis is on practical skills and conceptual
understanding of the methods, not theoretical or mathematical rigour. While the focus is
on genomics data, the material is generally applicable to many areas where large numbers
of measurements are taken. Students will learn how to perform analyses using the R
computational programming environment and other tools, through lab sessions, homework, and
a group project. Topics include:

- Data quality control and assessment (batch effects, outliers, preprocessing)
- Exploratory data analysis (visualization, clustering, PCA)
- Hypothesis testing in high-dimensional data (linear models, multiple testing)
- Functional genomics: gene networks, gene set analysis
- Challenges and pitfalls in data interpretation
- Special topics presented by guest lecturers

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TA job Description:

Qualifications: Ideally you will have taken STAT 540 or have equivalent experience. You
should be sufficiently skilled to help students with basic statistics, R and biology
domain questions that will arise, with more weight on the first two. Enthusiasm for the
material and teaching ability are also very important.

Responsibilities:

- Attending all lectures
- Supervising the R tutorial sessions
- Answering student questions by email
- Grading (two homework assignments + group projects)
- Testing and if necessary debugging/tweaking R tutorials
- Managing the course web site
- General assistance with course administration

We will consider hiring two 1/2 TAs instead of a full single TA, especially to balance
biology vs. statistics background.

Interested students should contact me directly; please include a resume (casual inquiries
are also welcome).

Thanks,
Paul

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Paul Pavlidis, PhD
Associate Professor of Psychiatry / Centre for High-throughput Biology
177 Michael Smith Laboratories    2185 East Mall
University of British Columbia    Vancouver BC V6T1Z4
604 827 4157      paul@chibi.ubc.ca
http://www.chibi.ubc.ca/faculty/pavlidis