Methods for Environmental and Naturalistic Data Analysis

Teachers: 
BODINI Antonio
Credits: 
6
Site: 
PARMA
Year of erogation: 
2021/2022
Unit Coordinator: 
BODINI Antonio
Disciplinary Sector: 
Ecology
Semester: 
First semester
Year of study: 
3
Language of instruction: 

Italian

Learning outcomes of the course unit

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 contents summary

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).

Course contents

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

Recommended readings

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.