Syllabus: Quantitative Methods in Biology, Biology 106, Todd Livdahl, Instructor

Office,BP 305; phone, 793-7514; e-mail TLivdahl@clarku.edu

Text: Dytham, Calvin. 1999. Choosing and Using Statistics: A Biologist's Guide. Blackwell Science, Ltd., Oxford

1/13

Introduction

1/15-30

Science, Experimental Design, Basic quantitative methods.

Handout: Platt, 1964

Any Introductory Biology chapter on Scientific Method

Dytham, 1-33

2/4-6

Data in Biology

Samples and variables

Frequency distributions, graphics

Dytham, 34-60

2/11

Quiz

2/13-18

Descriptive statistics

of location

of dispersion

parameters and statistics

Handouts

2/27-3/18

Probability distributions

Binomial

Poisson

Normal

Handouts

3/20

Quiz

3/25-4/1

Estimation, hypothesis testing

Confidence limits for means

t-distribution

t-tests

comparisons of variances

61-119

4/3-10

Comparisons of several means: Analysis of Variance

A priori tests

A posteriori tests

Two and three-way analyses of variance

99-146

4/15

Quiz

4/17-24

Regression and correlation

Multiple Regression, Analysis of covariance, Nonlinear fitting

Correlation

Nonparametric statistics, Goodness of Fit tests

147-176