Teaching Statistics Methods for
Biology
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Outline
• About stat 503
• Students
• Course set up
– Lecture
– Project
• Challenges
• Teaching approach
– Project design
• Self-defined project
• Instructor-defined project
• More relevant project, collaboration with labs?
– Method selection system
– Class discussion tool
• Clicker, Mixable and Hotseat
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Stat 503—
Statistical Methods for Biology
• Semester: Fall, spring, summer.
• Prerequisites/Corequisite: Mathematical experience at the
level of one semester of calculus is required.
• Primary Audience: Biology, pharmacy, some agriculture and
health science.
• Description:
– Extensive coverage of statistical methods for mature students.
– All examples and applications are drawn from the life, health
and agricultural sciences.
– Mathematical experience at the level of one semester of
calculus is required, though no calculus is used in the course.
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Student statistics(Fall, 2011)
Level
Major
Sophomore
7%
Graduate
30%
Junior
30%
Biochemistry,
Botancy,
Animal Science,
Agronomy,Genetics,
Ecological, Forestry,
46%
Biology
54%
Senior
33%
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Student statistics(Fall, 2011)
Experience
Project
5%
Expectation
None
18%
Statistics
course
10%
Statistical
software
7%
Interested in
application
15%
Understand
statistical
concept
60%
None
85%
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Lecture topic(Fall, 2011)
• Basic summary statistics
and graphs
• Probability theory
• Binomial distribution
• Normal distribution
• Central limit theorem
• Sampling distribution
• Experiment and
sampling design
• Confidence interval
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Hypothesis test
Nonparametric test
One way ANOVA
Two way ANOVA
Multiple comparison
Chi-square test
Correlation and
univariate linear
regression
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Project(Fall, 2011)
• SAS
– SAS codes demonstrated in class
– SAS help session provided by the statistics department
on Wednesdays.
• Project
– Running topic: health, living style and happiness.
– Survey based, include data collection, analysis, and
report.
– Focus on problem set up and explanation.
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Challenges
• Motivation
• Teaching statistical concept and notation
– Example 1
• Teaching application
– Example 2
• Project design
• Attention
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In the classroom
• Lecture focuses on statistical concepts
• Class activity
– Monty hall
– 17 points
– Coke experiment
– Hand-shaking experiment
– Collaboration with labs?
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Project
• Project design
– Ultimate goal: hand on experience on experiment design, data
collection, data analysis and result presentation
• Challenges
–
–
–
–
Skill set, timeline and monitoring
Experiment vs. observational study design
Software
Relevant/motivating topics ?
• Successful cases
– Self-defined projects (sum 2008)
– Instructor-defined projects
• Paper airplane contest
• Happiness and GPA
• Hotseat evaluation
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Hotseat
• Introducing Hotseat on Spring, 2011
• Role
– As Clicker
– As student support help session
• www.purdue.edu/hotseat/login/login.aspx
• More function development ?
– Class question model
• Question edit
• Answer collection
• Result presentation
– Class discussion model
• Student-initiated topic
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Statistical consultant system
• Direct method selection through a logic flow.
• http://www.stat.purdue.edu/~tqin/statsys/sys
tem101/system/main.htm
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