BIOLOGY 383 Statistical Analysis of Biological Data As David Salsburg wrote in "The Lady Tasting Tea: how statistics revolutionized science in the twentieth century", biology has changed into a quantitative science that relies on statistical methods for setting confidence levels on the conclusions we make and for assessing how well our data fit our conceptual models. In this course, we will focus on statistical literacy -- not mathematics, and by doing so, we will discuss and explore how biologists "do" science: how we ask questions, design experiments, analyze data, and draw conclusions. We will use a modern statistical program that is free and widely used world-wide, rather than some unique, expensive program that you may never have access to again. Because our goal is to take a tour of statistics and start practicing statistical thinking, this course is surprisingly fun.

Dr. Evan Weiher
353 Phillips
weiher@uwec.edu

For details visit the course D2L site.

week 1. Overview, introduction to probability, random variables, and probability distributions

week 2. Summary statistics, introduction to hypothesis testing

week 3. Covariance, correlation, and simple linear regression

week 4. Transformations, general linear models

week 5. Practice, exam 1

week 6. Analysis of variance, one and two-way

week 7. Experimental design and complex anova

week 8. Analysis of covariance, categorical data

spring break

week 9. Categorical data, managing data, displaying quantitative information

week 10. Practice, exam 2

week 11. Multiple regression, polynomial regression to model selection

week 12. Introduction to multivariate methods

week 13. Partial Correlation, path analysis, structural equations

week 14. Ad hoc methods and special functions

week 15. Practice, exam 3