BIOL 300 Study Guide - Summer 2018, Comprehensive Midterm Notes - Sampling Distribution, Probability Distribution, Standard Deviation

• School: UBC
• Department: Biology
• Course: BIOL 300
• Professor: Keith L. Jackson

Document Summary

Statistics is the study of methods to describe and measure aspects of nature from samples. It gives us tools to quantify the uncertainty of these measures that is, statistics makes it possible to determine the likely magnitude of their departure from the truth. All of these quantities describing populations namely, averages, proportions, measures of variation, and measures of relationship are called parameters: statistical methods tells us how best to estimate these parameters using out measurements of a sample. Our ability to obtain reliable measures of population characteristics and to assess the uncertainty of these measures depends critically on how we sample populations. Good samples are a foundation of good science. The first step in collecting any biological data is to decide on he target population: a population is the entire collection of individual units that a researcher is interested in.