STAT:7400 Computer Intensive Statistics

Preliminaries and Prerequisits

This course is intended primarily for PhD students in Statistics and Biostatistics to provide an introduction to a range of computationally intensive methodology and to the use of computation in statistical research and practice. The primary computing framework we will use is R; if you are not already familiar with R from your other courses it would be a good idea to take some time over break to become familiar with it. The R web site has links to a number of free introductions and to introductory books that are available.

You will also need to write a few simple C programs. If you are not yet familiar with C again it would be a good idea to get up to speed over the break.

• A good introductory book is Practical C Programming" by Steve Oualline.
• A good reference is C: A Reference Manual by Harbison and Steele.
• A simple C program example is available here. Make sure you can
  • compile and run this program
  • modify the program to calculate another one argument function
  • modify the program to calculate a two argument function

You will be working on the Division of Mathematical Sciences Linux computers. If you have not used these before you can find some introductory materials here. These Linux introductions may be useful:

• Introduction to Linux from the Linux Documentation Project
• Introduction to UNIX from the Imperial College

Some other useful resources:

• Coding standards
• Brief introduction to the Git source code management system