First up: What are statistics?

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Here is the presentation with information on Excel and a worked set of examples with hummingbirds, to tie in with the natural selection topics. Also, skip on over to the Excel StatBook resource, for a set of examples, tables, graphs and significance tests that you can play with.

This presentation was used in my class as a collaborative task. I shared a copy with each student for them to make notes. If you want o use it, I would recommend doing your own before-after quiz. Ours looked at pre- and post-assessment data on the Classification unit.

And Geoff Browne kindly gave permission to upload his t-test powerpoint to slideshare:

Updated Essential Biology 01 Statistical Analysis

T-test practice (printable GoogleDoc here):

• Test your reaction times here! Are there significant differences between Friday before lunch and Monday after lunch
• Use the IBDP Bio Excel StatBook to choose, apply and interpret the right test and graphs.

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Resources:

• Click4Biology statistical analysis page, with great help for calculators and excel
• Excellent Handbook of Biological Statistics from John MacDonald
• Basic Statistical Tools, from the Natural Resources Management Department
• And The Little Handbook of Statistical Practice is very useful.
• Sumanas statistics animations
• Field Studies Council stats page, including the t-test
• Open Door Website stats page and help with graphs and tables. Particularly useful is their page on errors in Biology.

Gapminder awesome human population stats tool. Watch Hans Rosling’s brilliant Joy of Statistics here. For a short clip:

And this enlightening talk from Han Rosling: No More Boring Data!

Click here for a funny article on the 9 circles of scientific hell.

Also, play with this: Google Correlate.

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Using your calculator:

– Using the TI GDC (from Click4Biology)

– Using the Casio pdf download (from keymath.com)

– Using the TI NSpire:

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Statistics in Action:

‘Real’ acupuncture no more effective than fake acupuncture, from ScienceDaily

Evidence Based Medicine First, medical website explaining the false health claims of many alternative medicines.

Here’s a nice profile on Edzard Ernst, the world’s first professor of alternative medicine. He has spent his career trying to get alt-med in line with real science.

Ed Yong, MrT’s blogging hero, writes for Cancer Research UK on the WHO’s verdict on mobile phones and cancer. Correlation vs cause!

Epidemiology: The Science of Cohort Studies. How do we generate lifetimes’ worth of data in studies in medicine? Ben Goldacre’s BBC Radio 4 documentary, Science: From Cradle to Grave. An amazing discipline to work in, and one birth cohort study has been running for over 65 years!

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TOK Discussions:

“Facebook Gives You Cancer” err…

And another peach from XKCD:

Key terms: t-test, mean, variability, data, reliable, significance, sample, excel, calculate, correlation, graph