This seminar focuses on the role of statistics and data analysis in undergraduate natural and social science courses. Its focus is on sharing applications of statistics that are central to each discipline, and a central goal will be to identify themes common across disciplines. This seminar will develop statistics modules that could be used in existing courses.

This course is being held in the Whitehead Campus Center - Room 313 on Thursdays, 10:00am - Noon. Coffee and tea will be served.

Course Schedule

• September 11, Probability (Bayes’ Rule) - led by Rob Manning and Kaye Edwards (more on Bayes Theorem courtesy of Richard Ball, and a PowerPoint presentation on An Introduction to Probability courtesy of Robert Manning).
• September 18, Distribution - led by Rob Manning, Jeff Tecosky-Feldman, Phil Meneely and Lynne Butler (Rob Manning's Mathematica Notebook on examples of Discrete Distributions)
  • PowerPoint presentations (courtesy of Lynne Butler) from this topic include Central Limit Theorem and Joint probability distributionsandContinuous random variables
  September 25, Distribution continued (Rob Manning's Mathematica Notebook on Distribution of a Sample Mean)
  October 2, Distribution continued (see Jeff Tecosky Feldman's presentations on Random Variable and Confidence Intervals)
• October 9, Hypothesis Testing/p-values - led by Iruka Okeke, Richard Ball and Kaye Edwards (see Richard Ball's presentation on p-values)
  October 23, Hypothesis Testing/p-values continued
  • Please review the below readings that Kaye Edwards will refer to:
    • The New England Journal of Medicine; Original Article: A Randomized Trial of Letrozole in Postmenopausal Women after Five Years of Tamoxifen Therapy for Early-Stage Breast Cancer, P.E. Goss and Others
    • Editorial: Letrozole after Tamoxifen for Breast Cancer -- What Is the Price of Success?, J. Bryant and N. Wolmark
    • Editorial: Beyond Tamoxifen -- Extending Endocrine Treatment for Early-Stage Breast Cancer. H. Burstein
    • Excerpts from Epidemiology, Leon Gordis - topics include The Kaplan-Meier Method, and Randomized Trials.
    • An article dated in the Philadelphia Inquirer, Cancer Treatment News Hits Home, Marie McCullough. You will have this article in your mail box by Tuesday morning, October 21, 2003.
  • Here are some optional reading materials that Iruka Okeke will refer to:
  • Science Magazine; Highly Variable Mutation Rates in Commensal and Pathogenic Escherichia coli, Matic et al (1997) which was written in response to:
    • High Mutation Frequencies Among Escherichia coli and Salmonella Pathogens, LeClerc et al 1996.
  • Here is a basic software program that is used by epidemiologists and includes a statistics tool. More information is available from http://www.cdc.gov/epiinfo/. If you like, download EPI-Info Epidemiology shareware from the CDC.
    

• October 30, Regression - led by Ben Le, Rob Scarrow, Richard Ball and Julio dePaula (see Rob Scarrow's PowerPoint Presentation on Introducing Statistics in the General Chemistry Laboratory, Ben Le's presentation on Correlation and Multiple Regression and Julio DePaula's PowerPoint presentation on Regression Analysis and an Excel worksheet addressing linear, non-linear and multiple regression).
  November 6, Regression continued (see Richard Ball's handouts on P-values and Hypothesis Testing Multiple Regression Analysis and P-values and Hypothesis Testing in Regression Analysis.)
  
• November 13, Analysis of Variance - led by Wendy Sternberg, Julio dePaula and Lynne Butler (see Wendy Sternberg's presentation on Analysis of Variance).
  • Readings include Chapters 11 & 12 from Aron & Aron Statistics for Psychology, and optional readings include Devore Ch. 10.
    • Aron Chapter 11 pages 377-386
    • Aron Chapter 11 pages 387-396
    • Aron Chapter 11 pages 397-406
    • Aron Chapter 11 pages 407-417 (Chapter 11 ends on page 415)
  November 20, Analysis of Variance continued
  • Readings for this week are as follows:
    
• Aron Chapter 12 (Chapter 12 starts on the last page of this document, page 417)
• Aron Chapter 12 pages 418-427
• Aron Chapter 12 pages 428-437
• Aron Chapter 12 pages 438-439
• Aron Chapter 12 pages 440-446
• Aron Chapter 12 pages 447-449
• December 4, Non-parametric statistics - led by Curtis Greene
• Thursday December 18, 10:00am - 1:00pm, an informal get together to discuss pedagogical issues.

Text books being used in this course are:

1. Probability and Statistics for Engineering and the Sciences, by Jay L. Devore
2. Statistics, by David Freeman, Robert Pisani and Roger Purves
3. Calculated Risks, How To Know When Numbers Deceive You, by Gerd Gigerenzer
4. Functions Modeling Change, A Preparation for Calculus, by Connally, Hughes-Hallett, Gleason, et al.
5. Statistics for Psychology 3rd Edition (2003), by Aron, A., & Aron, E.A.

Additional Useful Sources

• Courtesy of Julio DePaula, a PDF file on An Introduction to Excel and a lab write-up that shows How to do Linear Regression and Error Propagation with Excel.
• Courtesy of Iruka Okeke, this is a commentary from a journal she reads regularly, Infection and Immunity. Notably, "The statistical errors identified in Infection and Immunity are comparable to those found in similar journals: 54% of the articles reviewed contained errors of analysis (20%), reporting (22%), or both (12%). The most common analysis errors are failure to adjust or account for multiple comparisons (27 studies), reporting a conclusion based on observation without conducting a statistical test (20 studies), and use of statistical tests that assume a normal distribution on data that follow a skewed distribution (at least 11 studies). The most common reporting errors are unlabeled or inappropriate error bars or measures of variability (15 studies) and failure to describe the statistical tests performed (12 studies). " View the PDF file on Review of the Use of Statistics in Infection and Immunity.

  ---

Participants

From left to right: Richard Ball, Economics; Robert Manning, Mathematics; Kaye Edwards, General Programs; Julio DePaula, Chemistry; Lynne Butler, Mathematics; Curtis Greene, Mathematics; Benjamin Le, Psychology; Jeffrey Tecosky-Feldman, Mathematics; Philip Meneely, Biology;Wendy Sternberg, Psychology; Iruka Okeke, Biology; and missing from the picture Robert Scarrow, Chemistry

Top of Page

If you have questions about this program email Kim Minor.