Quantitative Ecology & Evolution (Multivariate Statistics) 215:575;

SYLLABUS 2007

 

 

Sept.    7          INTRODUCTION ; DATA                                          Chapter 1

 

            14         DESCRIPTIVE STATISTICS;

                        CLUSTERING VS. ORDINATION               Chapter 1

 

            21        BASIC CLUSTERING

                        ALTERNATE CLUSTERING METHODS Chapter 3

 

            28         No Class – PJM away

 

Oct.     5           No Class – PJM away

 

12        CHOOSING CLUSTERING METHODS                Chapter 3

                        CLUSTERING WITH SAS

 

            19         MATRIX ALGEBRA                                                  Handout

                        LINEAR TRANSFORMATIONS                               Chapter 2

 

            26         PCA                                                                            Chapter 2

                        PCA WITH SAS                

 

Nov.    2           DIVISIVE CLASSIFICATION                                   Chapter 5

                        CANONICAL CORRELATION                                           

 

            9           M.V. HYPOTHESIS TESTS                                     Chapter 4 & Handout                                   

            16         MANOVA                                                                    Chapter 4 & Handout

 

            23        No Class – Thanksgiving Break      

 

30        MANOVA & DISCRIMINANT ANALYSIS               Chapter 4 & Handout

 

Dec.    7           REPEATED MEASURES ANALYSIS                    Handout

 

           

 

Project I is due on 26 Oct.  Project II is due on Dec. 7 See reverse for details

 

TEXT: McGarigal, K., S. Cushman, and S. Stafford. 2000. Multivariate Statistics for Wildlife and Ecology Research. Springer, New York.

 

P. J. Morin; e-mail: pjmorin "at" rci "dot" rutgers "dot" edu , office - ENR 148, phone 2-3214


 

Quantitative Ecology and Evolution (MULTIVARIATE STATISTICS) - 215:575

 

 

PROJECT I:

 

1.         The goal of your FIRST project is to gain familiarity with the scientific literature involving one or more methods of multivariate statistical data analysis.   The project involves writing a short essay (5-10 pages max. less references, typed, double-spaced) reviewing the use of one or more types of multivariate analysis in ecology or evolution.   The essay should focus on the specific attributes of a given class of techniques, and should emphasize the ecological or evolutionary interpretation of the technique.  Potential topics include cluster analysis, ordination, discriminant analysis, or any other topics listed on the syllabus.

 

2.         The project will involve reviewing some of the original literature on a given topic.   References listed in the bibliography of your text should offer a useful entry point into the literature. This is not meant to be an onerous time-consuming exercise. Use it to your advantage to learn about an approach that you plan to use in your own research.

 

PROJECT II:

 

1. The goal of your SECOND project is to gain familiarity with one or more methods of MULTIVARIATE data analysis, USING SAS.  Ideally, the analysis should be of your own data.  If you lack data, we can provide you with some.  The analysis should describe some aspect of the data set that is not obvious from simple inspection.  Possibilities include a cluster analysis of community samples describing species abundance patterns, analysis of spatial patterns, ordinations of small data sets, discriminant analysis of differences between sets of samples, etc.

 

2. Your analysis should be described in a short (10 pages max., typed, double-spaced) report divided into the following sections:

 

A. INTRODUCTION : briefly describe the phenomenon that you are analyzing, and the questions that you attempted to answer.

 

B. MATERIALS AND METHODS : describe the data, how the data were collected, the analytical techniques used, and why those techniques were selected.

 

C. RESULTS : concisely describe the outcome of the analysis.   One table or figure can and should replace many pages of prose.

                 

D. DISCUSSION : interpret the biological significance of your results.

 

E. LITERATURE CITED : list any references cited in the text of your report. See a recent issue of the journal ECOLOGY

 

F. APPENDIX : append copies of your raw data, computer output, and/or any additional calculations.

 

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