Analyze data quantitatively and develop testable models of that data.

Analyzing data is extremely important, since this is how things change. If you cannot analyze the data properly, you may end up saying the wrong thing and causing harm to someone or making it harder to get the correct answer.

In almost every class I have taken at Longwood, analyzing the data is important and occurs in almost all the lab courses that are taken. One course that I did this in a research type of setting for the first time was the second semester of organic chemistry. The professor introduced us to parabens, and why they are so harmful to the human body. After he lectured us on what parabens actually are, we were tasked with created with parabens ourselves, and looking at their antimicrobial activities. Once the antimicrobial data was collected, we were tasked with analyzing the data and making it make sense. We found that as the carbon chain length became longer on each paraben, they were able to kill more bacteria than the one previously. The paper where we analyzed this data is located below.

Another class that I was tasked with analyzing data was a beginning chemistry course that I had taken my first year at Longwood. Since I am a part of the LIFESTEM program, we were in a separate chemistry class than the rest of the freshman. In the lab, we were tasked with creating an experiment that had to do with algae and how it affects the Chesapeake Bay. My group and I decided to determine if nitrogen and phosphorus did in fact cause algae growth to increase. The results of the experiment are below in poster form.

Analyzing numerical data is extremely important, since this is the most common kind of data that is collected as a biologist. In my future, analyzing numerical data will be just as important, as we often look at whether a patient’s body is within normal limits for certain vitamins, molecules, cells, etc., or whether they need to be treated for having too much or too little of them.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1qYkwLA9wvhDC6xlP_UAD26lKmdC9SUXS0lmERS-ZgL8/edit?usp=sharing

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1iLWhJ-NbMkycmXVGp7ngfl-vhn4kQw8NW0pS3W0jyS8/edit?usp=sharing