MSCI 642 - Practical Environmental Statistics

Spring, even years (3) Newman Prerequisite(s): Instructor’s consent

This course explores practical statistics for sampling, measuring, and making sound inferences from environmental data. The course is intentionally a broad survey of methods applicable to physical, chemical and biological studies, drawing examples from each of these areas. It will blend lectures, student-directed exploration of concepts, and computer-based examples. Exercises will be done with the SAS statistical software package and other more specialized shareware. Eight general themes will be addressed: quantitative measurement, basic measurement quality control/outlier detection, variance structure, applications of regression analysis, sample size estimation, establishing field sampling or laboratory experiment designs, quantifying belief, and Monte Carlo/Bootstrap methods.