Biology 214 - Biostatistics for Biology Majors

Biology 214 - Biostatistics for biology majors, Spring 2026

Arndt F. Laemmerzahl, course coordinator

alaemmer@gmu.edu

Contact information, office hours, etc. can be found here.

NOTICES:

Tables that you will need are posted here:

Random number table: pdf.
Normal distribution table: pdf.
t-table: pdf.
MWU tables: pdf.
Chi-square table: pdf.

The syllabus for all lecture sections can be found here.

A laptop is required in BIOL 214. More details can be found here.

Tutoring: free tutoring is available for this course through Knack. Please see here for more information.

R Information:

Instructions for installing R are divided into two parts (everyone needs to do this):
- Please make sure you have both R and R-studio installed by the second recitation (in time for your class).
- READ the instructions carefully. They do work, but if you skim over them or skip a step you may get very frustrated.

Professor Kester has put together some very nice videos on how to use R for most of the things we do in this class. You can find them here.

Homework assignments:
(Links become active when homework is assigned).

Homework 1	Homework 2 penguins2.csv (the file you need).	Homework 3	Homework 4	Homework 5

Homework 6	Homework 7	Homework 8	Homework 9	Homework 10

Homework 11	Homework 12

The text can be found here:

Statistics, Biology, and R
(Updated January 9, 2024)

(Username: Biostat11, Password: Gecko3, both are case sensitive).

Lecture notes:

The notes below are provided in pdf (these are for convenience only - the text (see link above) is far more up-to date).

Lecture topic:	PDF	Comments	Review sheet

Introduction/course policies	pdf	Syllabus is tentative!	N/A
Statistics and their use	pdf		pdf
Data organization and notation	pdf		pdf
Descriptive statistics	pdf		pdf
Miscellaneous subjects and random sampling	pdf		pdf
Probability	pdf		pdf
Distributions	pdf		pdf
Other distributions & expected values	pdf		pdf
Sampling distributions and estimation	pdf		pdf
Interval estimates	pdf		pdf
Hypothesis testing I (!)	pdf		pdf
Two sample tests	pdf		pdf
Assumptions	pdf		pdf
The Mann-Whitney U test	pdf		pdf
Paired tests	pdf		pdf
More on two sample tests (one sided tests)	pdf		pdf
Chi-square goodness of fit	pdf		pdf
Contingency tables	pdf		pdf
Correlation	pdf		pdf
Regression I - the least squares line	pdf		pdf
Regression II - hypothesis testing	pdf		pdf
Regression III - assumptions and miscellaneous topics	pdf		pdf

Questions? Please contact me at: alaemmer@gmu.edu