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Lecture 2A - Biological Variability, Descriptive Stats

This document discusses biological variability and sources of variation in biological systems. It notes that biological and environmental systems are inherently variable, and this variation is what makes biology both challenging and interesting to study. The main sources of variation discussed are biological variation due to genes and the environment, as well as other sources like measurement error. The document also covers descriptive statistics and concepts like measures of central tendency, dispersion, the normal distribution, and sampling.

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megan
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55 views

Lecture 2A - Biological Variability, Descriptive Stats

This document discusses biological variability and sources of variation in biological systems. It notes that biological and environmental systems are inherently variable, and this variation is what makes biology both challenging and interesting to study. The main sources of variation discussed are biological variation due to genes and the environment, as well as other sources like measurement error. The document also covers descriptive statistics and concepts like measures of central tendency, dispersion, the normal distribution, and sampling.

Uploaded by

megan
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Lecture 2A - Biological variability,

Descriptive stats
Distributions
biological/ environmental systems are inherently variable & interesting
variation makes biology:
challenging
interesting
Have to deal with a sea of data in biology

Main sources of variation


Biological variation

nature | nurture
genes | environment

Discontinuous Variation - genes

distinct categories
tends to be qualitative
controlled by a few genes
unaffected by the environment

Continuous Variation - environment

no distinct categories
tends to be quantitative
controlled by a lot of genes
strongly influenced by the environment

Other sources of variation


Univariate variation
typical 'theoretical' relationships

Bivariate variation

typical 'theoretical' relationship

Multivariate variation

what actually happens in biology!


we may need controls, to eliminate confounding factors
Measurement error

systematic bias

multiple people
machinery error

Experimenter error

random bias
snafus
haphazard
difficult to get

Precision

'reliability'
How close are values to each other?
Accuracy

How close are values to 'correct' values?

'Normal' distribution
Resulting from continuous variation

The normal distribution provides lots of predictive power


Normal distributions don't always occur in Biology!

Bi-modal distributions may conceal two normal distributions

Mechanics
Descriptive stats
Central tendency
useless for widely spread data
not often used for biological data

Mean: used for 'interval' and 'continuous' data in symmetrical distribution

Mode: mostly used for categorical variables ('nominal' data) i.e. separate
groups of data

Median: suitable for:

1. 'ordinal'(ranked) data
2. skewed 'interval' or 'continuous' data

Dispersion
This method of describing dispersion is used for data that do not have a
normal distribution, i.e. non-parametric data

Range: limited use by itself; emphasises extremes, largest-smallest

Variance used to calculate: standard deviation (SD) & standard error

Degrees of freedom:

number of independent pieces of data that we are using to make a


calculation
this is not the same as sample size
n-1

Sampling

The larger the sample size, the more we are likely to 'capture' the
variability in the population

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