Publications by bayesianbiologist
Using simulation to demonstrate theory: Hardy-Weinberg Equilibrium
One of my teaching roles is in an introductory Genetics course, where first year students are presented with a wide range of new ideas at a relatively fast pace. It seems that often, students choose to take a memorization approach to learning the material, rather than taking the chance to think about how and why these genetic concepts actually ...
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Real-time data collection and analysis in class
As September draws nearer, my mind inevitably turns away from my lofty (and largely unmet) summer research goals, and toward teaching. This semester I will be trying out a teaching technique using live data collection and analysis as a tool to encourage student engagement. The idea is based on the electronic polling technology known as ‘cli...
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Visualizing Bayesian Updating
One of the most straightforward examples of how we use Bayes to update our beliefs as we acquire more information can be seen with a simple Bernoulli process. That is, a process which has only two possible outcomes. Probably the most commonly thought of example is that of a coin toss. The outcome of tossing a coin can only be either heads, or t...
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Visualizing Sampling Distributions
Teacher: “How variable is your estimate of the mean?” Student: “Uhhh, it’s not. I took a sample and calculated the sample mean. I only have one number.” Teacher: “Yes, but what is the standard deviation of sample means?” Student: “What do you mean means, I only have the one friggin number.” Statisticians have a habit of talking ...
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Uncertainty in markov chains: fun with snakes and ladders
I love board games. Over the holidays, I came across this interesting post over at Arthur Charpentier’s Freakonometrics blog about the classic game of snakes and ladders. The post is a nice little demonstration of how the game can be formulated completely as a Markov chain, and can be analysed simply using the mathematics of state transitions. ...
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Monty Hall by simulation in R
(Almost) every introductory course in probability introduces conditional probability using the famous Monte Hall problem. In a nutshell, the problem is one of deciding on a best strategy in a simple game. In the game, the contestant is asked to select one of three doors. Behind one of the doors is a great prize (free attendance to an R workshop, ...
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