Experimental Design and Data Analysis for Biologists

2009 Details


What to do before attending

You will either be attending the entire course or selected modules/topics, depending on who you are. Before attending the modules, you need to download and print the handouts for the particular days. Because the number of people attending varies widely from day to day, it's difficult for us to bring copies without wasting large amounts of paper, or running very short.

Assessment

Some of you will sit an exam, as indicated in the table below. The exam will be open book, composed of 10 questions. Each question corresponds roughly to a half day of lectures. You can get a sample exam paper from (2000) or 2001 here. Answers to some of the questions are available, as notes on another version of the file.

Melb 654-634
Attend all topics; full exam; see detailed handout
Melb Zoology Hons
Attend at least half of the sessions; exam assessed as Pass/Fail only
Melb Botany Hons
Attend at least half of the sessions; exam assessed as Pass/Fail only

Background Material

It's assumed that you have an understanding of basic statistics. You will probably have that from one or more undergraduate subjects that you've taken. If you're feeling stressed, we have prepared some refresher material as pre-recorded lectures. They are large files, and are provided in Windows Media Player (wmv) format. If you have any problem playing the files, the free VLC multimedia player will deal with it. It plays most kinds of files, and works on pretty much any operating platform. We find installing this program on a Mac is a better solution than opening the files in Windows virtual maching under BootCamp or Parallels. We have also provided a pdf handout of the same topic.

Revisionary material

Uncertainty and Probability (wmv version; 20 mb or pdf)

Introduction to statistical inference I and II (pdfs of I and II, or wmv-I, and wmv-II; 35 mb each)

Exploratory Data Analysis and Assumptions of statistical analyses (pdf) or Multimedia version (wmv version; 65 mb)

Experimental design wmv version (36 mb) or pdf

We've included some more basic versions, covering Summarising data, Estimation, and Hypothesis Testing (wmv versions, 20-30 mb each), and pdf versions (Summarising, Estimation, HT)

Lecture Handouts

Lecture handouts are ready for you to download, print, and bring along to the relevant days.

Module 1(14 and 15 July)

Session

Topic

13 July AM Revision: Exploratory Data Analysis, sampling design, and introduction to power

14 July AM

Single factor analysis of variance (ANOVA) model and nested designs

14 July PM

Multifactor analysis of variance: factorial designs & Miscellaneous issues

15 July AM Randomised blocks, split plots, and repeated measures

15 July PM

Models for correlated data

Module 2 (20th and 21st July)

Session

Topic

20 July AM

Simple linear regression models

20 July PM

ANCOVA and multiple regression

21 July AM Categorical Data analysis

21 July PM

Categorical Data Analysis (cont.) and Presentation of results

 

Module 3 (23 and 24July)

23 July AM

Multivariate statistics (including resemblance measures, clustering, data standardisation, PCA) and guide for PCA in R plus gastropods dissimilarity example in R

23 July PM

MultiDimensionalScaling (including SIMPER, hypothesis tests, Bio-ENV) and R guide

 

Tutorials/Worksheets

Arrangements depend on which group you fall into:

Melb 600-601

Melb Zool. Links

Formal sessions, following each module.

Melb Zool Disc.

Melb Botany Melb

Work through remaining worksheets at own pace. Tutor available at Melbourne available after each module
Postgrads Work through worksheets in own time.

 

Tutorial Material

The worksheets can be done in two formats, using common commercial stats packages, such as SYSTAT or SPSS, or using the free package R. The two formats cover the same material, although the breakdown of the worksheet material differs slightly.

R

Follow this link to download R and the tutorial material onto your own computer, or to work through the material while it is stored on the web (you will still need to have R installed).  You may also want to look at web pages developed by Murray Logan at Monash University, which provide customized installations of R that are aimed at biologists.

SYSTAT and SPSS, Minitab

The data files for the worksheet questions are provided here in spreadsheet format with an .xls (Microsoft Excel) extension. These files can be imported into SYSTAT or opened in SPSS (make sure you tick the Read Variable Names box), or opened in pretty much any spreadsheet package. Alternatively, you can also cut and paste the data, column by column, from Excel into SYSTAT, SPSS or NCSS, or any other statistical package.

Worksheets

Data files

The data files are are "bare bones", with just the data and relevant variable names.  Most of them are taken from Quinn & Keough (2002), and the files are provided with additional explanations at www.zoology.unimelb.edu.au/qkstats.

Worksheet 1

Worksheet 2

Worksheet 3

Worksheet 4

Worksheet 5

Worksheet 6

Worksheet 7

 Worksheets 8 & 9

 

Software

We have provided copies of two pieces of software that we find useful for power analyses. Both are free, but you should acknowledge the use software in papers, and you may want to go to the authors' web sites periodically to check for updated versions.

File Name

Description & www link

Size

 

Gpower ver. 3

G Power

1.5Mb Mac, 10 Mb Win

Download

R www.r-project.org
or Murray Logan's pages
 20-30 Mb  

PiFace

Web-based Power/sample size

83k

Download


All of the worksheets, handouts, powerpoint presentations are Copyright © Gerry Quinn, Jan Carey, & Mick Keough - All Rights Reserved. Please do not distribute them beyond the course.

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Maintained by Mick Keough & last modified July 10, 2009