Biology 211: Biostatistics and Experimental Design

Winter 2018

Instructor: Melanie Lloyd

email address: [email protected]

office: McCardell Bicentennial Hall Rm 373

office hours: Monday, Wednesday 10:30-12 or by appointment

It is best to contact me via email. I will respond to emails generally during working hours. If you don't hear from me within by the next working day, feel free to re-send your email.

TA: Grace Zhang [email protected]

Lectures 8:15-10:15 Monday, Wednesday, and Friday rm 467

Labs Monday and Wednesday 1:00-3:30 rm 467

Course Objectives

This course is a basic introduction to the design of biological experiments and analysis of data. We will explore examples across biology, including human physiology, microbiology, and ecology. You will gain experience in this course in the following areas:

• Designing experiments
• Describing data: standard descriptive statistics, frequency distributions, measures of variability
• Choosing and performing basic statistical tests
• Presenting your data graphically, writing about it, and describing it in oral presentations
• Troubleshooting data analysis with online tools

Readings, github, and statistical software

Text: Choosing and Using Statistics: A Biologist's Guide Third Edition by Calvin Dytham

This book is generously provided in full online at https://sunsetridgemsbiology.wikispaces.com/file/view/Choosing+and+Using+Statistics.pdf

All course materials are provided to you on the course github page at https://github.com/mlloyd23/bio211_JAN2018/wiki.

If you find something you need is missing from the page, please contact me!

The statistical software we will use in this course is RStudio. It can be downloaded at https://www.rstudio.com/products/rstudio/download/ (the RStudio Desktop free version).

It is expected that you have this up and running on your own laptop by the beginning of class on Friday 1/12/18.

Helpful Online Resources

Course policies and expectations

Arrive to class and lab prepared, on time, and with your laptop. There will be many hands-on tutorials in this class and you are expected to be following along on your computer. If you arrive late or are under prepared for class, you will receive one warning. After that, your grade will be affected. If you have any conflicts with anything on the class schedule, please contact me as soon as you identify the conflict, and no later than 24 hours prior to the meeting or deadline.

Cell phones are not to be used in class. If this is a continuing problem, your grade will be affected.

Late assignments will lose 1 letter grade for every day it's late

Some of the work in this course is meant to be collaborative and some is meant to be independent. With the exception of the final exam, you may discuss assignments with classmates but you must turn in your own original work. If the allowed level of collaboration is unclear for any assignment, please ask!

Please see Middlebury's Honor Code if you need any clarification about academic integrity.

Evaluation

Assignments 50 points (10 assignments, 5 points each)

Attendance and participation 5 points

Mid term open book test 10 points

Final paper 10 points

Final exam 25 points

ADA Accommodations

Students with documented disabilities who believe that they may need accommodations in this class are encouraged to contact me as early in the semester as possible to ensure that any necessary accommodations can be implemented in a timely fashion. Assistance is available to eligible students through the ADA Office. Please contact Jodi Litchfield, ADA coordinator ([email protected]). All discussions will remain confidential.

The designs of this syllabus and course are based on Sallie Sheldon’s Bio 211 and David Allen’s Winter 2012 Bio 211. I would like to thank them for sharing their course material.