Week 1: Introduction and the Philosophy of Statistics

In these lectures we will introduce the course itself and demonstrate how it fits into the MI Fisheries Science course ecosystem.

We will then cover some basics about statistical terminology, and review how R Projects work so we can hit the ground running next week.

Lecture Topics

• Introduction to the course and review of assignments
• Reviewing statistal terminology
• Reviewing basic logic of (frequentist) statistical analysis

In-class Activities

• Determine presentation schedule for above
• Introduction to R Projects, and reviewing a sample project

Pre-class Prep

Please download R and R Studio, and make sure you know how to install packages.

Readings

Please re-familiarize yourself with R and R Studio. The FISH 6002 materials are available.

• Before Wednesday’s lecture please read: Hasley et al. (2015) The fickle P value generates irreproducible results. Nature Methods 12(3): 179-185. Pay special attention to Box 2, the glossary of common statistical terms.

Additional Resources

• Barde, MP, and Barde, PJ. (2012) What to use to express the variability of data: Standard deviation or standard error of mean? Perspect Clin Res. 3(3): 113-116

• Nuzzo, R. (2014) Scientific method: Statistical errors. Nature News

• Web app for visualizing normal distributions
• Web app for demonstrating relationship between sample mean, standard deviation, etc

Files

• FISH6003_Week1_Intro.zip

Slides

Part 1:

Part 1 via speakerdeck

Part 2: Part 2 via speakerdeck