Experimental Design
Bio683
Learning Objective
This course is intended to provide a foundation in the proper design of scientific research projects in the field of biology. A wide range of biological experiments will be covered, and each type of experiment will be explored with an eye toward choosing the appropriate statistical technique for analysis. By the end of the course, successful students will be able to design biological studies that are statistically tractable and perform basic statistical analyses using the programming language R.
Class meets in BSBW room B25 TR 2:20-3:35.
For more information email Dr. Blackmon.
Syllabus
Lecture Topics
| Week | Topic | Reading |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Introduction to R and statistics | WS CH. 1-2 |
| beyond the bar | ||
| p-value crisis | ||
| 2 | Using R | horned-beetle-data |
| 3 | Summaries and estimates | WS CH. 3-4 |
| 4 | Probability and Bayes' theorem | WS CH. 5 |
| McElreath chap 2 | ||
| 5 | Proportions and categories | WS CH. 6-9 |
| 6 | Continuously distributed variables | WS CH. 10-13 |
| cricket data | ||
| 7 | Experimental Design, ANOVA, Correlation | WS CH. 14-16 |
| 8 | Exam 1 | |
| Spring Break | ||
| 9 | Regression and GLM | WS CH. 17-18 |
| 10 | Mixed models | |
| 11 | perils of stepwise modelling | whittingham-2006 |
| 12 | Dimensional reduction | |
| 13 | Journal reading and plot discussions | Bickel-1975 plot examples |
| 14 | Final Exam Rmd | rubric |
Lab Activities and Homeworks
homework 1
homework 2
Lab week 3 & homework 3
gnatocerus.male.csv
gnatocerus.female.csv
HW3 - examples from class
Lab week 4 & homework 4
mcmc.log.csv
Example of plots
Lab week 5 & homework 5
Lab week 6 & homework 6
zebra.finch.csv
Lab week 7 & homework 7
oaks.csv
litter.csv
fish.csv
Lab week 8 AZ.csv
Lab week 9 hiC.data.csv
PCA example
Extra Resources