Webinar 1: Spurious statistical relationships … what’s in a P-value?

Have you ever been disappointed by a statistically non-significant relationship? What did you do about it? A study assessing publication bias in the social sciences showed that two-thirds of papers where the null hypothesis is true never see the light of day; they are not even written up. However, more than 90% of those with strong statistical relationships are submitted for publication. What is the value of a statistical relationship in epidemiological research? Is assessing the p-value the best method to establish a meaningful epidemiological relationship or clinical relevance? This webinar will address some of the fallacies in statistical relationships while building on the foundations for hypothesis testing.

DR LUKHANYO NYATI

Dr Lukhanyo Nyati holds a PhD from the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg (Wits), which focused on longitudinal modelling of the adolescent growth spurt in Birth to Twenty Plus (Bt20+) cohort. Currently, he is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the SAMRC Developmental Pathways for Health Research Unit (DPHRU), at Wits. He’s a former Biostatisitical Consultant for the Facult of Health Sciences, Wits, as well as providing undergraduate teaching in research design and statistics. Additionally, he has worked on several global projects including as a Lead Anthropometrist (South Africa) on the Oxford Interbio 21st Study, Data Analyst on the Bt20+ Human Capital Study, the IAEA/WHO/ OXFORD Multi-centre Body Composition References Study (IAEA MBCRS), and Data Scientist on the Healthy Life Trajectories Initiative (HeLTI) South Africa. He has a keen interest on longitudinal growth modelling.

WEBINAR DETAILS:

Thursday, 30 June 2022

14.30 SAST (UTC+2)

Host: Dr Lukhanyo Nyati –lukhanyo.nyati@wits.ac.za

Register in advance for this meeting: https://bit.ly/3yeVlBT

You will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting.

GLORY CHIDUMWA

Glory Chidumwa holds a BSc

(Statistics and Mathematics, University of Zimbabwe – 2014), Masters and PhD in Biostatistics (Wits University – 2021). He is one of the first four (4) fellows to receive funding for biostatistics masters training from the Wellcome Trust (UK) under the Sub-Saharan Africa Consortium for Advanced Biostatistics training (SSACAB) at Wits University in 2016. His PhD explored interactions between nine (9) chronic NCDs using data from the WHO Study on Global Ageing and Adult Health (SAGE) Wave 1 and Wave 2 in South Africa, with some aspects of generalized structural equation modelling (GSEM) and multilevel temporal Bayesian networks. He has worked as a data scientist for MRC/Wits DPHRU, the Centre of Excellence in Human Development at Wits University, WHO and Africa Health Research. Currently, he works as a statistician at AHRI, where he provides statistical support in medicine for PIs. His interest is in statistical aspects of longitudinal and cluster randomized trials as well as SEM.

About the Statistical Learning Fast Track Series:

The modern health scientist requires a specialised set of skills to handle the rapid growth of data in the field. The application of statistics demands a deep knowledge of the field and advanced computational skills. The Centre of Excellence (CoE) in Human Development has developed a 6-part webinar series which teaches key concepts in statistical application, using a fast track method to gain statistical knowledge and application. The topics will range from basic to advanced, covering topics like hypothesis testing, longitudinal data analysis, data reduction methods, and meta-analysis. Practical examples will be run on Stata, which is the recommended package for these webinars. However, attendees can follow the examples using their preferred statistical package. The goal of these webinars is to accelerate learning in biostatistical methods to help researchers and students to speedily grasp key concepts and methods.

www.wits.ac.za/coe-human/ 011 717 2680

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