Statistics Fundamentals

Objectives

This two day course gives a comprehensive introduction to basic statistical analysis for scientists and is customised to your training requirements. Emphasis is placed on the interpretation of the statistical summaries obtained and their application in the working context. The course can be run using any statistical software package.

Training Outline

• Assessing noise variability graphically - histograms, boxplots.
• Interpretation of summary statistics - mean, variance, standard deviation, repeatability.
• Measuring precision of results, standard errors, confidence intervals.
• Statistical Significance - how to interpret it? Is it useful?
• Sample size - how much data do I need to collect?
• Comparing Groups, T tests (paired and unpaired).
• Introduction to Analysis of Variance for simple (one factor) experiments.
• Simple Regression Modelling, assessing the quality of fit of regression models. Regression diagnostics

Entry Level

The course assumes no prior statistical knowledge

Software

The course can be run using any recognised statistics software package.

Style

The course contains a mixture of formal training sessions and practical workshops where participants can analyse data from structured exercises using the selected software. We prefer to run the course using customised data from the participants' own environment but off the shelf data sets can be used.