McGill University, Department of Epidemiology, Biostatistics and Occupational Health EPIB 613: Introduction to Statistical Software (Fall 2006 / Winter 2008) Assignment 3, due April __, 2008 Working in teams of two...   1a Re-produce (or if you think you can, improve on) three of the graphs shown in "Examples of graphs from Medical Journals." These examples are in a pdf file on the main page. Use Excel for at least one of them, and R/Stata/SAS for at least one other. Do not go to extraordinary lengths to make them exactly like those shown -- the authors, or the journals themselves, may have used more specialized graphics software. You may wish to annotate them by making (and sharing with us) notes on those steps/options that were not immediately obvious and that took you some effort to figure out. Insert all three into a single electronic document.   1b Browse some medical and epidemiologic journals and some magazines and newspapers published in the last 12 months, Identify the statistical graph you think is the worst, and the one you think is the best. Tell us how many graphs you looked at, and why you chose the two you did. If you find a helpful online guide or textbook on how to make good statistical graphs, please share the reference with us. [The bios601 site http://www.epi.mcgill.ca/hanley/bios601/DescriptiveStatistics/ has a link to the Textbook by Cleveland and the book "R Graphics" by Paul Murrell. If possible, electronically paste the graphs into the same electronic file you are using for 1a.     2 [OPTIONAL] The main page has a link to a lifetable workbook containing three sheets. Note that the 'lifetable' sheet in this workbook is used to calculate an abridged current life table based on the 1960 U.S. data. Use this sheet as a guideline, and create a current life-table ('complete', i.e., with 1-year age-intervals) for Canadian males, using the male population sizes, and numbers of deaths, by age, Canada 2001. [The calculations in columns O to W of the lifetable sheet are not relevant for this exercise]. Details on the elements of, and the construction of current lifetables can be found in the chapters (on website) from the textbooks by Bradford Hill and Selvin, and in the technical notes provided by the US National Center for Health Statistics in connection with US Lifetable 2000. See also the FAQ for 613 from 2005. The fact that the template is for an abridged life table, with mostly 5-year intervals, whereas the task is to construct a full lifetable with 1 year intervals, caused some people problems last year.. they realized something was wrong when the life expectancy values were way off! Since this is an exercise, and not a calculation for an insurance company that wants to have 4 sig. decimal places, don't overly fuss about what values of 'a' you use for the early years.. they don't influence the calculations THAT much: If you try different sets of values (such as 0.1 in first year and 0.5 thereafter) you will not find a big impact. But don't take my word for it .. the beauty of a spreadsheet is that you can quickly see the consequences of different assumptions or 'what ifs'. [In practice, in order not to be unduly influenced by mortality rates in a single calendar year (e.g. one that had a very bad influenza season), current lifetables are usually based on several years of mortality data. Otherwise, or if they are based on a small population, the quantities derived from them will exhibit considerable random fluctuations from year to year ] Once you have completed the table, use the charting facilities in Excel to plot the survival curve for the hypothetical (fictitious) male 'cohort' represented by the current lifetable. On a separate graph, use two histograms to show the distributions of the ages at death (i) for this hypothetical male 'cohort' and (ii) those males who died in 2001. To make it easy to compare them, superimpose the histograms or put them 'side by side' or 'back to back' within the same graph. Explain why the two differ in shape and location. Calculate/derive (and include them somewhere on the spreadsheet) the median and mean age at death in the hypothetical cohort and the corresponding statistics for the actual deaths in 2001.   (updated March 26, 2008)