BIOLOGY 708 / Quantitative Methods in Ecology and Evolution

3 unit(s)

J. Dushoff, B. Bolker

This new course focuses on realistic quantitative modeling of lab and field data. The main activity is learning to fit models to data using a statistical package and programming language called R. In this applied context, the course will visit a variety of philosophic topics: parsimony vs. realism, Bayesian vs. frequentist statistics, estimation vs. hypothesis testing. The course will enhance your ability to ask interesting biological questions with a quantitative flavour; and to construct, parameterize, and test models for your own data.