Chapter 1 Introduction to Stats

These notes accompany Chapter 1 — Statistics and samples — of our textbook. The reading below is required, Whitlock and Schluter (2020) is not, but is encouraged.

Motivating scenario: You have seen or heard about statistics, but you don’t really know what people are getting at. You hear words like “p-value”, “statistically significant”, “effect size”, “bias”, or “nonindependent” but can’t pinpoint exactly what they mean?

Learning goals: By the end of this chapter you should be able to

  • Get a sense of what motivates statisticians.
  • Be able to explain the difference between a population and a sample, a parameter and an estimate, the relationship between these four concepts, and the things which can make a sample deviate from a population.
  • Have a sense of why as statisticians, we must consider the type of data and variables in building models.
  • Understand the differences in motivation and what we can get out of an observational and experimental study.
The other assignment for class is to read pages 38-44 and 104-112 available here of Calling Bullshit (Bergstrom and West 2020).

References

Bergstrom, Carl T, and Jevin D West. 2020. Calling Bullshit: The Art of Skepticism in a Data-Driven World. Random House.
Whitlock, Michael C, and Dolph Schluter. 2020. The Analysis of Biological Data. Third Edition.