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Experimental Methods in Biology (Biostatistics)

Using statistics in biology (data analysis): Mean, median, mode, standard deviation, standard error of mean, error bars

Standard Deviation

Data within one standard of the mean represents ~68% of your dataset. Two standard deviations is 97% within your data

Standard Error

$ What is standard error?

standard error = standard deviation/sqrt(# of samples)

How close your mean is to the actual mean.

Error bars

If the error bars overlap, that means that we are not confident enough that the values are different to onsider “statistically significant”.

Types of graphs

Histogram

Distribution of data

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  x-axis

Line

Measurement over time.

The x-axis is always time

Time is constant, not an independent variable in a line graph

$ Is the x-axis an independent variable (in line graphs)?

No, the x-axis is a control variable, time.

Pie

Data is in percentages, out of 100%

Bar

Comparing averages

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x-axis is non-numerical

Scatter

R^2

$ What is R^2 (scatter plot)?

The R^2 value denotes how much of the variance in your dependent variable is explained by your independent variable. An R^2 value of 1 means 100% of the variance is explained. A high R^2 value indicates a high likelhood that two variables are correlated.

Description

Examples:

Figure 4. Relationship between female stickleback standard length in millimeters and the number of eggs per clutch. The length of a female stickleback correlates well with total number of eggs she will product.