METHODS FOR ENVIRONMENTAL AND NATURALISTIC DATA ANALYSIS
cod. 1007193

Academic year 2020/21
3° year of course - First semester
Professor
Academic discipline
Ecologia (BIO/07)
Field
Attività formative affini o integrative
Type of training activity
Related/supplementary
48 hours
of face-to-face activities
6 credits
hub: PARMA
course unit
in ITALIAN

Learning objectives

Main objective of this introductory course to data analysis is to let the student becoming familiar with the discipline, its logic and its tools. In particular the student should develop the skill to select data that are most appropriate to solve a question and by which tools such data can be appropriately analyzed.

Prerequisites

Elementary mathematics: summation, product, matrices, determinants, limits, derivatives.

Course unit content

Main contents of the course are probability theory and related distributions (normal, binomial);experimental data and their treatment (tables, chartsm, hystograms) and the most important elementary statistical tests (Z, T, ANOVA, Regression, Correlation).

Full programme

1.Sampling and data: descriptive statistics
2.Probability theory
3.Random variables and their distributions
4. Probability theory
3. Random variables and their distributions: binomial, Poisson, normal.
5. Hypothesis testing
6. The chi-square test
7. Contingency tables and association between categorical variables
8. Statistica inference: the distrubutiuon of an estimate; the confidence interval
9. Inference in a population with normal distribution. Standardized normal distribution and Student's t distribution.
8. The Student's t test and the comparison of two samples
9. Comparing more than two samples: analysis of the variance one way, two ways, interaction
10. Correlation
11. Linear regression

Bibliography

M.C. Whitlock, D. Schluter, Analisi Statistica dei dati biologici. Zanichelli.
T.H. Wonnacott, R.J. Wonnacott
Introductory Statistics
Franco Angeli

Teaching methods

Concepts are explained in classroom-taught lessons and exercises are assigned to the students to make the concept they have learned theoretically operational.

Assessment methods and criteria

Written examination in which the student is asked to solve a problem by applying the statistical test chosen among those covered in the course and answer spome theoretical questions related to the topics cevered in the course. Depending on the restrictions imposed by the Covid the exampination will switch to an oral presentation by means of the Teams platoform. To this and depending on the number of candidates the frequency of the examination dates may be changes as needed.

Other information

In the present situation caused by the COVId pandemy lecturing will be offerd comletely on line, conducted on Teams platform from the teacher's office. Tools at disposal for this acitivity are PC, external web cam, microphone and classic blackbord made vidible by the connections with the external webcam.