There are many different types of study designs, especially in the health-care field.  To investigate various ways to setup a study, as well as the relative strength of each method, you should go to http://www.vox.com/2015/1/5/7482871/types-of-study-design.

Read the article and take notes.  Make sure you understand the difference between observational and experimental studies in general and the differences between the types of studies described within each category of observational or experimental.

You will have a quiz on this material after spring break.

Use the class data file and the MyStat summary table in your Google Drive ‘class view’ folder to help you answer the questions in your Choosing Graphs and Statistical Tests Class Data Practice Google Doc.  For homework you should choose and enter the statistical test you would use for each questions and the type of graph you would use to visualize the data.  You will use MyStat to actually run the test and make the graph during our next class period.

Due: Monday, 3/30/15 11:59:59pm

Test Friday, 3/2/15, using Google Sheets to calculate various descriptive statistics and create associated graphs. I created a practice test and shared it in your Google ISR folder.

You should also finish the Google Docs Gettysburg Activity part 1 by Wednesday before class.  If you need the MyStat software to answer any questions you can come to my room during activity period on Tuesday.

When measuring a particular variable in a population (e.g. weight), you would expect a certain amount of variation throughout the population.  You could calculate the mean and then use the standard deviation to describe the ‘spread’ of the data away from the mean.  You could also plot the data using a histogram to show the frequency distribution of the variable across the population.  That histogram will take on a certain ‘shape’ depending on how that particular variable is distributed.  A very common shape is one called the ‘normal distribution’.  The normal distribution is the classic bell curve.  You have already seen various types of distributions on the stattrek website when you looked at patterns in data.  You should now read more about the normal distribution and standard deviation here:

http://www.mathsisfun.com/data/standard-normal-distribution.html

You can skip the sections on ‘Standard Scores’ (z-scores) and ‘Why Standardize’.

You should try to answer the 10 questions at the bottom of the page to help you better understand the types of questions you can answer about a population when you know the mean and standard deviation.

You should complete this and the Graphing with Google spreadsheet before class on Tuesday, 3/10/15

As you read in Chapter 8, researchers will often graph their data to show trends or correlations etc…

To get an even better feel for important graph types, how they are used, and how they are interpreted please go to the following site:

http://stattrek.com/statistics/charts/data-patterns.aspx?Tutorial=AP

On the left side you will see 8 subtopics under ‘Charts and graphs’.  The first is ‘Patterns in data’ and the last is ‘Comparing data sets’.  Work through all 8 of these topics.  There are videos associated with each topic if that is helpful to you, but you do not have to watch each one if you are understanding the reading, examples and practice problems.  But remember that they are there to help you if you need it.

We will be applying all of this information (descriptive statistics, graphs, and eventually inferential statistics) to experiments throughout the rest of the course, so it is very important that you understand these things now!!

Complete by Wednesday, 3/4/15

You should complete the following for homework:

1. Finish the Descriptive Statistics Walk-through in Google Sheets if you didn’t finish it in class.
2. Read Chapter 8 in your STEM book (Graphing) and answer the questions on the homework sheet given in class.  The handout is also in the ISR 2014b ‘Class View’ folder in your Google Drive.
3. If I share another Google Sheet with you about graphing, you do not have to complete it yet.  You should wait until we do it in class.

You will have time next class (Thursday, 2/26/15) to work on this also.

Due: Sunday, 3/1/15 11:59:59pm

You have already read chapter 7 in your STEM book on descriptive statistics.  Soon we will learn how to take advantage of computer programs to quickly calculate various statistics for us.  But first you must be sure you understand what the statistics actually mean when you are trying to interpret them.  To further help your understanding of some of these descriptive statistics, you should complete the following:

• Go to this page: http://www.mathsisfun.com/data/central-measures.html  to read more about ‘central tendency’.
  • at the bottom of that page answer questions 4, 5, and 6.
• Go to this page: http://www.mathsisfun.com/data/quartiles.html to read more aboutquartiles and theinterquartile range.
  • answer questions 1, 3, 4, and 6 at the bottom of that page
• Go to this page: http://www.mathsisfun.com/data/standard-deviation.html to read more about ‘standard deviation’.
  • answer questions 1 and 3 at the bottom of that page
  • You do not need to memorize the equations for standard deviation or variance but you do need to understand what they mean.