Instructor -í‚   Sara Adlerstein

Fri 2-5PM

3CR

Messing with messy data" is a course that will actively engage students in topics where data exploration and modern regression techniques are used to approach a variety of issues, in particular dealing with ecological questions. The course will improve student learning by promoting educated and intuitive approaches to working with data. The combination of skills provided by this course will help the student in conceptualizing, solving and communicating data analysis.

This course will be hands-on-data and students can bring their own data to explore and perform analysis. Statistical modeling will be approached as much an art as an application of techniques and computer methods. Emphasis will be on exploration of data, framing of the relevant questions based on data available, creative thinking to approach concrete limitations to data analysis, and critical evaluation of peer-refereed publications that make use of statistical analysis. Also, in this course, the students will learn basics to use the S-Plus statistical computing environment and a set of tools to implement computer intensive data analysis. Appropriate for students who are not statistic majors but who are continuously faced with challenging data.