Quantitative Thinking: Induction, Deduction, Estimation, Hypothesis Testing, Study notes of Biology

Download Quantitative Thinking: Induction, Deduction, Estimation, Hypothesis Testing and more Study notes Biology in PDF only on Docsity! USES OF QUANTITATIVE THINKING Induction: how many, how big, how often, how variable, how distributed Deduction: if X is true, the how likely am I to see Y LOGIC OF THINKING QUANTITATIVELY Estimation -- What is the biological question? -- What do I want to estimate? -- How precisely do I want to estimate it? -- How much data am I willing to take? -- How shall I take those data? -- Calculations -- Conclusions Testing Hypotheses -- What is the biological question? -- Which data are necessary to address that question? -- If THIS is true, then could THAT be so? -- How much data am I willing to take? -- How willing am I to accept that THIS is true? -- Calculations -- Conclusions THE NATURE OF DATA Types of Variables -- Classifying Variables -- Categorical (attributes, non-ordered vs. ordered) -- Ordinal or ranked data -- Mensural or metric -- meristic: discrete with many states, integers -- continuous: all values possible, arbitrary cut-offs significant digits: if 12.3 cm = x, then 12.25 < x < 12.34999999… if 12.33 cm = x, then 12.325 < x < 12.33499999… What do you wish to measure; how precisely do you wish to measure it?