In Biology, we will use a variety of approaches to analyzing our data. These links will take you to more information about using statistics in biology, displaying your data, and data analysis.
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What are Statistics?
When we collect data to help us address questions in biology, we must have a way to determine what those data mean. We use statistics to allow us to describe patterns in our data (Gotelli and Ellison 2013). Often statistics are used to estimate parameters, which are population characteristics that we are interested in learning…
How to Display Data
Displaying the data allows us to visualize what the relationships between our variables are before we engage in more formal statistical procedures (such as hypothesis tests and confidence intervals). At times, what you observe in these visuals may direct you to one statistical procedure as opposed to another (or lead you to ask a statistician…
Descriptive Statistics
Now that you have worked with various means of displaying your data, we will shift to considering how to describe that data. Descriptive statistics provide us with a formal means of doing exactly that. Here, we will consider central tendency and variation.
Statistical Tests
There are many different statistical test procedures. Before we look at the tests you may use, let’s do some quick reminders! Remember that the idea with test procedures is that you have a null and alternative hypothesis, and you are examining whether your data allows you to reject the null hypothesis in favor of the…