Reading Week!

This Thursday regular lecture

Spring Break next week (8-12)
Monday 15th Leap Class / Drop in Q&A
Thursday 18th Midterm in class

The veracity of evidence is independent

of the magnitude of your belief in it

Strongly Held Beliefs Facts

Jim Inhofe (R-OK) Brings A Snowball To The US

Senate Floor To Prove Climate Change Is A 'Hoax'

Feb 26 2015

When asked whether

there was a conflict
with someone with his
portfolio being a
creationist, he
responded: "Absolutely
not. How ridiculous. It's
absolutely ridiculous.
That's why I didn't
answer the question
because it has no
relevance."
Gary Goodyear Secretary of State
for Science and Technology 2008-2013

Common sense: basic ability to perceive,

understand, and judge things, common to nearly
all people and can reasonably be expected of
nearly all people without any need for debate

The case against common sense:

Think about how stupid
the average person is;
Now realize that half of
them are dumber than
that
George Carlin

Take a fair coin (H 50% - T 50%)

and flip it four times. How often was
heads followed by another head?

In the sequence HHHT, for example,

that happened two out of three times
a score of about 67%.
For HHTH or HHTT, the score is 50%
and so on ...

There are 16 equally

possible outcomes
Calculate for each
sequence the odds of H
followed by H
Average the results
The answer is not
50-50, but 40.5% in
favor of tails.
So much for common
sense.

Joseph Heath
Philosophy U of Toronto

Evidence:
Factual knowledge or data that supports or
casts doubt on a hypothesis.

Empirical Evidence:
is a collective term for the knowledge or
source of knowledge acquired by means of
the senses, particularly by observation and
experimentation.

Evidence:
Factual knowledge or data that supports or
casts doubt on a hypothesis.

Empirical Evidence:
is a collective term for the knowledge or
source of knowledge acquired by means of
the senses, particularly by observation and
experimentation.

Edward de Bono

Only the
human brain
can
deliberately
change
perceptions,
change
patterns,
invent
concepts, and
tolerate
ambiguity.

~40% of Americans believe earthquakes, floods and

other natural events including climate chance are
gods will

Funny things happen when perception is not questioned, patterns

are changed and concepts are invented with willful ignorance of
ambiguity

Aweful things happen when perception is not

questioned, patterns are changed and concepts
are invented with willful ignorance of ambiguity

Ecology (like all the

sciences) is the
search for patterns
their causes and
effects

 when you can measure what you are

speaking about, and express it in
numbers, you know something about it;
but when you cannot measure it, when
you cannot express it in numbers,
your knowledge is of a meagre and
unsatifactory kind; it may be the begining
of knowledge, but you have scarcely in
your thoughts advanced to the stage of
science, whatever the matter may be.
Lord Kelvin

Google ecologist and look under images.

What activity is common to most images?

MEASUREMENT

Living off grid in the woods alone

but paying taxes exceeds your
eco-footprint share

Warped map of predicted

magnitude of climate change

(well, you might) but everyone

else must use data
Data analysis extracts information
from measurements while dealing
with uncertainty in measurements

Organizing an [ecological] study

What is the aim of the study?

What is the main question being asked?
What are your hypotheses?
Define your predictions
Collect data (observing the Golden Rule)
Summarize data in tables
Present data graphically
Statistically test your predictions
Analyze the statistical results
Present a conclusion to the proposed question

Basic
Terminology
Variables
Populations
Samples
Parameters
Statistics
Nikki Heim collecting grizzly bear fur samples

How do human
activities affect
abundance and
distribution of
cryptic predators like
wolverines?

Nikki Heim baiting camera trap line

What is a variable?
Variable: any defined characteristic that varies
from one biological entity to another.

Ryan Popowich winter bull trout survey

Chris Williamson collecting farm escaped Atlantic salmon in a Vancouver Island river.

Examples of a variable:
Plant height, bird weight, human eye colour, number of fish
species etcetc
Samples are selected randomly from a population
If several individuals are selected, their characteristics may be
very similar or very different.

What is a
population?
Population:
the entire
collection of
entities we
are interested
in.

Helen Ford clearing experimental oyster sets

Examples
Lice load on
salmon
Population
distribution &
abundance
(like your bird surveys)

Species diversity
in ocean habitats
Corey Peet sampling lice loads on
adult Pacific salmon

What is the relationship

between lice loads on
wild salmon and salmon
farms?

Marty Krkosek sampling lice

load on juvenile migratory
salmon

Sample: a
subsets of the
population
being
measured and
used to
estimate the
distribution of
the variable
within the true
population

What is a sample?

We sampled a
lot of oysters

What is a parameter?
Parameter:
any calculated
measure used
to describe or
characterize a
population

For example, the

population mean is
the single, fixed
value parameter
that indicates the
average value of a
variable within the
population.

Can we characterize the entire reef?

No, therefore must sample

What is a statistic?
Statistic: the estimated population parameter
Population of Interest

Population

Sample

Parameter

Statistic

Sample

this is bad why?

Sample

Population

this is VERY bad

Sample

Population

or this VERY good

Population
Sample

or this ?

Population

or this ?

Population

or this ?

Population

or this ?

Population

In an experiment we take a sample of population. From this

sample we infer characteristics about the population

The Golden Rules

Random: Are your data to be selected at random from the population
you are studying?
Independent: Has every data point available got an equal chance of
being selected; each is independent from all others
Error is the difference between your measurement and the true value
This is experimental or observational error, not inherent (real)
variability

In your tutorial bird survey:

What is the experimental unit of the experiment?
Does your bird survey follow the Golden Rule? Why?

Example: British birds and pubs

Samples neither random or independent

Example: Nile Perch and net mesh

Samples not random

If either rule is broken, results will be biased in one form or

another and your conclusions will surely be wrong.

We have data!!
First question: What kind?
1.Continuous variables These are variables that can
take the form of decimals.
Example. Weight, length, height, GPA.
2. Discrete (or discontinuous) variable These are
variables that cant take the form of decimals.
Example: number of students, number of trees at a site
3. Categorical variable Used when data fit into
categories or classes
Example: Age class (egg, larva, pupa, adult)

Co

Current speed?

Co

# of
prairie dog burrows?
Dog
holes?

Wing length data?

Ca

Gut contents (i.e. food)?

Co

Ca

Co

Tree respiration?

Banana slug colour

morphs?

After we have collected

the data and identified
the variable type we
generate descriptive
statistics
i) Central Tendency
ii)Variation

Measures of Central Tendency:

Describe where the data points cluster.
Mean
Median
Mode

X
Mean home
price in Greater
Victoria today is
$637,853
Median $589,000

The average salary at our company is

greater than all our competitors

Frequency distribution of
the monthly salary of 25
workers..
(aka MEAN)

What drives large differences between

mean, mode and median?

Mean now
$2,760
Median & Mode
largely unchanged

Midterm I Frequency Distribution

Mode: 82.50%
Median: 72.5%

Why use statistics?

It is almost never possible to obtain measures and calculate
parameters (the real value) of variables for the entire
population of interest
Statistics allow us to estimate these values for the entire
population based on samples
Statistics allow us to calculate the level of confidence in our
results. (as a rule, the larger the number of samples, the closer
the statistic is to the parameter, and therefore the higher the
confidence)
Statistics also allow us to efficiently compare populations to
determine differences among them (in time and/or space)

Isle Royale National Park - Wolf - Moose Dynamics

the linear equation

y = slope(x)+intercept
y = mx+b
y = 1/3x + 0.14

Sources of
Variation
How To
Deal With
Them.

R2=0.81

Why are all points

not on the line?

Scatter plot of fish abundance as a function

of pothole size

Core elements of statistics

Data quality
Independent
Random

Descriptive Statistics
Classification of Variables
Means, Modes, Medians
Variation in your sample

Analytical Procedure
(aka Comparative Statistics )

Significance
Power
T-test
Regression & Correlation