The course objective is found in our syllabus:To provide students with the knowledge, theory, and methodological skills for analyzing and interpreting the spatial patterns of various diseases in order to elucidate underlying exposure processes giving rise to the observed patterns. The students referred to were expected to have a special interest in Public Health, and recruitment for this new course especially targeted students in the School of Public Health. The eventual audience included students from the departments of Biostatistics and Epidemiology, at both the PhD level and the Masters level (with the latter predominating). Students were expected to have had introductory probability theory and some knowledge of biostatistics.
Another objective was to exercise certain BioMedware software products, especially one established product (Stat![5]) and a product soon to be released (Gamma[1]). Several of the labs were structured around these pieces of software, which are primarily designed for performing spatial statistical tests. The course allowed us to both alpha/beta test the software, and also generated insight from the students about ways in which the software could be improved.