09 Jun Biology 301 Problem Set 4
Question
BIOL 301 PROBLEM SET 4 (170 pts)
ANOVA, CORRELATION, REGRESSION, and cumulative problems
Your answers to these questions are due in my office anytime before 11:00AM Tuesday May 19th. If they are turned in late you will lose 10% per day. So, if you turn it in at 11:01, you lose 10% immediately.
Here are the general rules. READ THEM CAREFULLY!
· All precepts of the Honor Principle apply.
· This is an “open book” assignment. You may consult any printed text or online resource you like in preparing your answers. However, you mustwork completely independently – you may not communicate with anyone except the professor about this assignment, in any way. Period.
· How to get help. If you have questions, please email me or come to an office hour. I will try my best to email you back as soon as I can.
· Read through the entire assignment before you start. Make sure you understand what is being asked. Ask if you’re not sure about a question. Follow directions very carefully. Complete sentences and typing are needed only where specifically requested.
· Neatness and professionalism count for 4 points on this assignment. Use, blue pen, or black pen for your handwritten answers. You may want to formulate your handwritten responses on a separate sheet (or a photocopy of the assignment), then transfer them over when you are satisfied with your answers. However, if you must type, your answer must fit into the allotted page. Collate the pages for each question together as instructed, then staple all of the pages together. If you must, use a computer, DO NOT CHANGE THE FORMATTING. That is keep EVERYTHING (i.e., the Question I. A., B., etc.) that is already on the problem set!
· Make sure you do not exceed the allotted space. Answers must fit within the blank space provided. Typewritten answers must fit within the space/font limits.
· For full credit you will need to show or tell how you obtained your answer. If you use Excel or R for problems that require calculations, you may want to explain exactly what you did, attach annotated output, or attach a program so that I can give partial credit if needed.
· Only put answers where they belong; do not change the number scheme, order, etc.
· The number of points you obtain on a question will depend on how thorough your procedures and answers to the questions are. For example, remember to include units for those measures for which units are needed, correctly label axes, include figure legends that are appropriate, descriptive and clear. If you perform a hypothesis test, make sure to include the test statistic, the df, and the P value. Remember to state your assumptions clearly and explicitly. Parts of this assignment are designed to mimic the situations you will face in the practical application of statistics. I expect you to apply all approaches that are necessary to address the problem, and to know when a specified approach is not appropriate.
· Do not worry about redundancy in answers within a question, except on the essay and write-up questions. It’s ok to repeat material across parts of the other questions.
QUESTION I – SHORT-ANSWER ESSAY (10 pts)
Your answer to this question should be handwritten or typed on this page in the space provided (12 pt font, double-spaced, <250 words). It is critical that you understand the process of statistical inference and be able to explain it even to someone who knows no statistics. Provide a verbal description of what statistical inference is and how it works; you may also include a small figure or sketch to supplement your text. Be sure to avoid statistical jargon and to use your own words. Do not just parrot back the textbook. QUESTION II – (10 pts) You answer to this question should be handwritten or typed on this page and should not exceed the length available below. Write your answer as if you are preparing a formal statistical report suitable for publication in a scientific journal. Researchers in Britain asked a few hundred people about their daily coffee intake. Of the 22 people from that group who had the highest coffee intake, nine of them reported hearing voices sometimes when no other person was present. Of the 22 people with the lowest coffee intake, three people reported sometimes hearing voices. A. Doan appropriate hypothesis test to investigate a possible link between coffee intake and hearing voices. Be sure to provide a clearly worded statement of your conclusion. B. Are the results from part (a) sufficient evidence to support the statement that coffee drinking sometimes causes people to hear voices? Why, or why not? QUESTION III: Experimental design (15 pts) During my postdoctoral work, I performed an experiment looking at the effects of predators on the activity of damselfly larvae. For this experiment, I included 20 individuals of one species. The experiment was done in a small container inside a larger container. The predator, a big, mean fish, was prevented from attacking the damselfly by placing the damselfly in the smaller inner compartment, and placing the fish in the larger outer compartment of the container. The walls of the containers were made of plexiglas, so the damselfly could see the fish to know whether it was there. To conduct the experiment, I would take a randomly selected larva, put the larva in the inner container, allow it to acclimate for 15 minutes, and then record from behind a blind all behaviors that it performed in a 45 minute observation period. After this, the larva was removed from the container and placed back in its holding container for 24 hours, and then the next day repeat the same procedure, except for putting the fish in the outer compartment. Address the following questions regarding this experiment: A) What is wrong with this experiment? B) How should this experiment be done correctly? C) How does this flaw affect the conclusions that can be drawn from the experiment QUESTION IV – (29 points) Kudzu is a plant that was imported into the US from Japan and now covers over 7 million acres in the southern US. The plant is generally considered a huge nuisance from ecological, forestry, and agricultural perspectives, but it may have a redeeming feature: it contains chemicals called isoflavones that have been shown to have beneficial effects on bones. Professor Strongbones used a completely randomized experiment to compare three groups of rats: a control group + groups that were fed either a low dose or a high dose of isoflavones from kudzu for 2 months. You may assume that appropriate randomization procedures were used to select rats for each treatment. At the end of the experiment, one of the response variables was the bone mineral density (BMD) in the femur (in grams per square centimeter) of each rat: see the dataset Kudzu. Is there an effect of kudzu isoflavones on the BMD of rat femurs that might justify further research (and perhaps vindicate the presence of kudzu on the landscape)? Please state the null and alternative hypotheses for this analysis, as formally as you can Prepare an appropriate graph presenting these data, similar to what might appear in a published paper. Thus, this figure should allow you to visually display the comparisons you are making statistically. Your graph should have only one panel, be labeled appropriately, and include a caption. Put your graph and caption on a separate page to be included immediately following this page. In the space below, please also explain briefly why you chose the particular graph that you did. HINT: You may want to work through all of the questions involving this dataset before you design this figure! QUESTION IV, continued What are the major assumptions you need to make in order to test the null hypothesis? Do the data meet these assumptions? Summarize your findings in the table below and provide evidence to support your claims on the next page, if needed; be sure to reference this evidence in your answers. (You may not need all of the rows in the table.) (10 pts) Assumption Do these data meet that assumption? Bottom line: is it appropriate to do your proposed analysis on this dataset? Circle one: YES/NO Briefly explain your answer: Please do not write below this line
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