Spring 2008

ANT 391L • Applied Data Analysis and Statistics

Course Description

This course provides an overview of applied data analysis geared toward research questions in ecology, physical anthropology and evolution. The course is designed to give students hands-on training in the conventional scientific workflow that follows data collection, including database management, exploratory data analysis and visualization, statistical analysis and interpretation. Statistical topics will include likelihood and Bayesian estimation, structural equation modeling, univariate and multivariate statistics, morphometrics, geospatial statistics, and bootstrapping. The course focuses on implementing these techniques in the statistical programming language R while also introducing students to other useful software tools (e.g. python, MySQL, Unix shell, SYSTAT) for handling specific problems. Throughout, emphasis will be placed on when and how to use these methods in practice and students are encouraged to use their own data sets in the course.

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