As a lab, we’ve made it a priority to increase the standards of our code to align with best practices for reproducibility and repeatability of our science. In keeping with this goal, this week in reading group Saras Windecker and Hannah Fraser lead a discussion on the British Ecological Society’s Guide to Reproducible Code in Ecology and Evolution, measures on how we can implement these guidelines in our research and the barriers that limit their uptake within the QAEco group. Here is a brief summary of that discussion.
Read the full article.Like many biology profs, Meghan often starts class by talking for a few minutes about the “organism of the day“, as a way to engage student interest and illustrate key concepts. I do something similar in my intro biostats course. I start some lectures with “statistical vignettes”: real-world examples that illustrate key statistical concepts and demonstrate their practical importance, hopefully in a fun way.
I’ll say right up front that I have no idea how successful these vignettes are.* I don’t know if they make much difference to how well students like the course, and honestly I doubt they move the needle in terms of student mastery of the material. But I like doing them, I can’t see how they’d do any harm, and I’m sure at least a few students like and appreciate them. So here are some of my statistical...
Read the full article.I am convinced that most people become scientists not for the big overarching aims of science, but for personal reasons. Because I love the outdoors, plants, working with data, and a very flexible independent job would be four of mine. Others love working with their hands, a certain form of status, just love their species, etc. But none of these are the overarching goals of science. And even if I don’t think overarching goals are why we get into science, I do think most scientists are bought into the overarching goals of science as well. Certainly I think most scientists see themselves as truth-seekers. Can we be more specific about the overarching goals of science? I am going to argue that there are three major overarching goals of science:
Ecologists (and lots of other people) often say that the world, or some feature of it, is ‘random’ or ‘stochastic’. But what exactly does that mean?
One view is that randomness is real; some features of the world are inherently probabilistic. Quantum mechanics is the paradigmatic example here, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t others. An alternative view is that calling something ‘random’ is shorthand for our ignorance. If we knew enough about the precise shape of a coin, the force with which it was flipped, the movement of the surrounding air, etc., we could accurately predict the outcome of any particular coin flip, which is deterministic. But we don’t have that information, so we pretend that coin flipping is a random process and make probabilistic statements about the expected aggregate outcome of many flips.
Does the distinction between these two views matter for ecologists? It’s tempting to...
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