Statistics for budding biologist : identifying and evaluating the gap between theoretical and real-world statistics

• Main Author: Toh, Sher Gi
• Other Authors: Wilson Goh Wen Bin
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: 2018
• Subjects: DRNTU::Science
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10356/74536
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

Proper understanding and proper application of statistical concepts is critical for scientific experiments. It is important to ensure that biology students are well-equipped and have the capability to effectively apply their knowledge to deal with real-world experimental issues. The purpose of this study is therefore to identify the most important biology-relevant issues in statistics and evaluate whether a theory-practice-gap exist in these issues among biology students. Five themes that are most widely discussed by literatures were identified from Nature Collection and a 10-question statistics survey was developed to examine the performance of students in the theoretical as well as practical aspect of statistics. The performance of students in the theoretical aspect of statistics is significantly better than the practical aspect (41.9% vs 24.2%), suggesting that students generally have difficulties in translating theoretical knowledge for use in practice. The findings in this study shows preliminary evidence that a theory-practice-gap exist among biology students.