Biology 105
Biology of Exercise
Spring 2003

3/31/03 - Post-class outline

Learning objectives:

How are statistics used in biological studies?

Practical exercise on graph construction.

• Variability
• Sampling
• Differences between means.
• Statistics
  • why are they needed?
  • how are statistical results reported?
    • Null hypothesis Ho - no difference between means
    • Alternative hypothesis Ha - there is a difference between means.
    • Statistical tests determine whether Ho can be rejected.
    • The P-value is the smallest level of significance at which Ho can be rejected. Ho can be rejected with greater confidence as the p-value becomes smaller.
    • In many studies, statistical signficance is set at p<0.05.

Practical exercise - constructing a graph.