Introduction to Some Basic Statistics

 
As you conduct your research projects and study the student manual, you will encounter discussions of statistics.  To truly understand statistics and their importance to all fields of science, you need to take a course in statistics.  Our purpose in this course is to help you learn some very basic statistics so that you can analyze your data as well as research results presented on the news, in magazines, in science seminars, and in the scientific literature. 

To help you better understand the information presented in the course manual, this web page provides you with a links to the Rice Virtual Lab in Statistics website and some other potentially useful sites about statistics.  Use these links as directed by your instructor and on your own.  A variety of actual experiments that are easy to understand are presented, along with the proper statistical analysis.  Some of the sites allow you to quiz yourself - take advantage of those sites to see how well you understand the basics of statistics.  You may also want to explore the website further for additional information and examples. 
  1. Hypothesis Testing 
  2. Case Studies for Statistical Tests
  3. Electronic Statistics Textbook