01 Statistical Analysis

From xkcd.com – science and maths webcomic

Here is the updated presentation for 2009, with more 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.

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

Updated Essential Biology 01 Statistical Analysis

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Assignments:

Test your reaction times here! Are there significant differences between Friday before lunch and Monday after lunch?

Does the internet help us learn facts? Work in groups, design 10-question fact-based quiz. Give out, participants can’t use the internet. Collect scores, means, standard deviations. Give time to look up answers on internet. Test again the following day. Compare means, standard deviations, plot with error bars. Discuss results & method validity. You could go a step further and perform a ‘meta-analysis’ based on the results of all the groups combined.

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)

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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:

Significance from XKCD.com

Correlation, from DogHouse WebComic

The Problem with Error Bars – from MemeBase

View this document on Scribd

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

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Comments (11)

Nikos | September 7, 2008 at 8:00 pm

Very useful I.B. stuff!

Reply
Susana E. Sulzberger | September 11, 2008 at 1:24 pm

Thank you very much for sharing your work.

I found that you presentation is very helpful to learn statistics.

Best regards,

Susana

Reply
Jules | August 30, 2010 at 8:33 pm

Your resources are always fantastic. Thank you so much for sharing. I, and my students, really appreciate your hard work and effort.

Cheers,
Jules

Reply
- Stephen | August 31, 2010 at 7:45 am
  
  Thanks Jules, Susanna and Nikos!
  
  Reply
Danielle Jensen | September 21, 2010 at 7:14 pm

Your awesome!! Thank you for sharing

Reply
bioknowledgy | September 17, 2011 at 8:24 am

Hi Steve the question numbering is a little out on the essential Biology notes. I took the liberty of changing the numbering and formatting a little: http://bioknowledgy.wikispaces.com/file/view/Essential+Biology+01+Statistical+Analysis.docx

I hope you don’t mind.

Chris

P.S. The wikispace is a new thing as the box and wordpress don’t work very well this side of the Great Firewall of China

Reply
- Stephen | September 17, 2011 at 9:31 am
  
  Thanks Chris!
  
  Reply
Heather Murray | February 27, 2012 at 1:06 pm

Hi Stephen,

I find all your presentations extremely useful. I would like to donate to your charities and have access to some of your new presentations. I was just wondering are they editable and are they available as power points rather than pdfs?

Thanks again,

Heather

Reply
- Stephen | February 28, 2012 at 10:18 am
  
  Hi Heather,
  
  Most of the presentations which can currently be downloaded are as pdf, as they were made originally on SMART Notebook and converted. I don’t use SMART Boards here in my new school and have switched to Mac, so am kind of stuck with them!
  
  There are some more recent ones made in Powerpoint, such as for the Genetics unit. Any which can’t be downloaded directly from SlideShare are likely to be powerpoint and editable.
  
  I hope this helps,
  
  Stephen
  
  Reply
Lakshmi | April 5, 2012 at 1:45 am

Dear Stephen,
your presentations on statistical analysis were very clear and easy for my kids to understand as well.
thanks a million for sharing. I was wondering if you had any practice problems on statistical analysis which could be given as a dry lab.
I usually give them some data and they process those data and analyze the same.
Lakshmi

Reply
CC | July 26, 2012 at 4:54 am

You, sir, are an IB god sent from above to aid me in my conquest to attain a 7 in HL IB Biology! I THANK THEE.

Reply