MSc Data Handling Week 1 – Assignment instructions
Assignment due 12th October.
You will hand in two one-page sheets according to the template below.
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The first will include a figure illustrating how the brain/body mass ratio varies among the
Classes of Aves, Mammalia, and Amphibia and/or Reptilia (so at least 3 Classes).
o In this figure, you should either illustrate the locations of the means and/or refer to
their value in the figure legend.
The second figure will illustrate how brain mass varies with body mass.
o Try to avoid using colour in all graphs, and instead use black and white points and
lines only. You may, if you find it necessary, use dotted/dashed lines or points of
different shape.
Template:
You can provide bullet points in your document in response to my questions below
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What is the overall aim of the analysis you will present?
What is the specific biological/ecological/environmental hypothesis that you are proposing?
What is your specific quantitative hypothesis related to the actual data you have collected?
Note - This is ultimately what we will use a statistical test with a p-value to assess the validity
of your finding.
Figure 1. provide a fully annotated legend to accompany your figure. Note that the one above is not
at all formatted to publication standard (see accompanying file “some notes on the presentation of
data analyses.docx” under the section on Figures)
Provide 3 to 4 bullet points summarising the results in a biological context alluded to in the figure
(remember, we have not done any statistical test so we cant say anything concrete yet). Examples
below…
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The results show…
This suggests that…
If true, this implies that…
The consequences of this study are…