Students will be able to analyze data quantitatively and draw appropriate conclusions.
For me, the most challenging aspect of research is statistical analysis. This has always been a source of stress and anxiety for me when it comes to my various experiments from different courses. There are several kinds of statistical analysis that can be run to determine the significance to the results but deciding which one to use has been the most difficult to me. Throughout my time at Longwood, I have been tasked with exactly this several times in different courses. Although it used to cause me extra stress, completing these activities has allowed me to grow more confident with these decisions.
Starting in my Introduction to Ecology and Evolution course, we had to use statistical analysis to determine the death rate and create surviorship curves from the datasets we chose. Our parameters of comparison were between sexes, locations, and time periods. With all these parameters, it meant that several statistical tests needed to be run. For this project, we decided to run both a T-Test and an ANOVA test. At the end of our analysis, we found that the overall death rate had increased over the years. This final presentation can be found below.
Another class that I had to identify which kind of statistical analysis to use was in Animal Behavior. As a part of this course, we had to write a research proposal that involved creating the methodology, which contains statistical analysis used. My group wrote our research proposal on investigating the effects of moisture level on the behavior of pill bugs. To determine whether our results were significant, we used both a chi squared test and a binomial test. This final research proposal can be found below.
Another course that allowed me to further my confidence in statistical analysis was Biology of Cancer. Throughout that course, we had to read various articles and answer questions on the figure contained throughout. These figures are what shows that statistical analysis of these papers. One of the papers we read investigated the tolerability of abemaciclib against metastatic tumors. This paper was filled with figures that discussed their results and statistical significance. This homework assignment can be found below as well as the paper it was based on.
BIOL 450 – Homework Assignment 5
Throughout my time at Longwood, I have been tasked with determining which statistical analysis to use as well as analyzing other works that used statistical analysis. Assignments that allowed me to do this have helped me grow in my overall confidence with using statistical analysis as well as interpret those I see in journal articles.