welcome to bananalysis!if you have forgotten why you are here, read the original post in this thread:
http://www.30bananasaday.com/group/debunkingthechinastudycritics/fo...otherwise, here's
what you can expect from this course:
1. learn enough statistics and study design to hold your own in conversation with anyone who throws numbers at you.
2. have the ability to conduct your own analyses so you don't have to take anyone else's word that this is what the data shows.
3. develop sufficient skills to acquire a technical grasp of the china study and other published items which use statistical analysis to make their point.
the primary
course materials are the following
1. the very well done carnegie-mellon open learning initiative statistics course (henceforth referred to as cmolis not to be confused with cialis):
http://oli.web.cmu.edu/openlearning/forstudents/freecourses/statisticsthis course is interactive, well-illustrated and even has video explanations.
2. supplementary exercises using actual data from the china study.
the bonus here is that you become familiar with this data by working on it directly.
3. statistical software
we recommend R because it is
open source,
gnu and excellent! you can learn how to get started with it by going here:
http://wiki.math.yorku.ca/index.php/R:_Getting_started(but ask if you have any difficulties or have no clue what to do)
alternately, you can use excel if you have forked out the money or pirated a copy and feel you must use it - the course does offer an excel stream as well.
if you have some other means of doing stats (eg scipy with python, spss or an abacus), there is nothing stopping you from using it, though you will have to obviously modify specific instructions to your software.
the
routine will be as follows:
1. the module to be covered will be added under "bearings" beneath existing items in bold (see below).
2. you are to do the topic from cmolis and post any questions or interesting points of observation you may have in this thread where they will be addressed.
3. extra exercises using china study data will be presented for discussion and completion.
your
course guides are:
1. normal though occasionally skewed
2. inviting of others to contribute and assist just for some variance
official start day is monday, july 26, 2010!till then, you can still do some things ... see bearings below.
in friendship,
prad
======bearings======get your software in place - ask for help if you have troublethen work on what is below. note that bolded items show
the topic presently under discussion.unit 1:
Introduction assignment #1 a solution in R a solution in excelunit 2: Exploratory Data Analysis (EDA)
Introduction assignment #2a module 1: Examining Distributions
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