This is the first part of the study guide for the final exam in Biological Data Analysis, fall 2008. The second part is two sets of practice questions. I recommend that you spend some time studying, then try to answer the practice questions under test conditions (no book or notes, timed, in a room full of people who are eerily quiet).
The final will be on Thursday, Dec. 18, from 1 to 3 p.m. in 116 Gore Hall (the usual classroom). If you can't take the exam at that time, let me know as soon as possible so we can set up an alternate time. Having other exams on the same day is NOT a legitimate reason for changing the day that you take the exam.
You may not use your notes or textbook during the exam; if English is your second language, you may use a dictionary. You will not need a calculator.
The exam will consist of 40 questions. About 30 will be of the same format you've seen on the previous exams: I will describe a data set, and you will say what the best statistical test to use would be. Your answers must be specific. For chi-squared or G-tests, you must specify whether it is a goodness-of-fit test or test of independence; for anovas, you must specify one-way, two-way, or nested, and if it's a one-way anova, you must specify model I or model II; for regression, you must specify linear regression, polynomial regression, multiple regression, or logistic regression. If there are two equally appropriate tests (such as G-test or chi-squared test, t-test or one-way anova), you only need to put one down. For the purposes of this exam, "correlation" and "linear regression" are considered equivalent; you may write down one or the other, or write "correlation/linear regression."
You may find the web page on Choosing a statistical test to be helpful in studying for these questions. That chart includes the Mantel-Haenzel test, which we haven't covered in class and which you therefore don't need to know for the exam. It also includes the randomization test of goodness-of-fit; although we did talk about that in class, I didn't give you a rule of thumb for when you have to use it instead of one of the other goodness-of-fit tests, so it won't be an answer on the exam.
About 10 questions will be on other material. You should know the assumptions of the different tests, how you tell whether those assumptions are met, and what to do if they're not met. You should be familiar with the different descriptive statistics, what they mean and what they're useful for. You should understand data transformation, multiple comparisons, and meta-analysis. You should be able to interpret the results of the different tests; for example, you should be able to explain what a significant interaction term means in a two-way anova.
Go to the first set of practice questions
Go to the second set of practice questions
Return to the Biological Statistics syllabus
Return to John McDonald's home page
This page was last revised November 19, 2008. Its URL is http://udel.edu/~mcdonald/statstudy3a.html