11 point Arial font; 1.5 spaces; no minimum number of references, BUT they must conform to the attached
format (Referencing style guide). The rest doesn’t matter so much to me. I am attaching the rubrics that will be
used to evaluate your essay. Now, regarding the essay topic, you should cover 2 topics:
The role of statistics in Biology. Consider the following questions to develop your essay: Is statistics necessary
to understand biological processes? Why? Which historical character (can they be more) has contributed
statistical tests and why? What motivates biologists to use statistical tests? Should there be integrity in the use
of statistics by scientists? Why? Should I know the assumptions of statistical tests before using them? What
constitutes a “good practice” in the use of statistics? – THESE QUESTIONS ARE JUST EXAMPLES and
should not try to answer them one by one until they form an argument. With these questions they should try to
guide their arguments to point 2.
The previous point should be reinforced with a discussion on the use of statistical tests (it may be only one, but
of the ones we have seen in class) by authors, in scientific articles. For example, I am attaching the article
“López-García NAU 2017.pdf”. In this article, the use of Student t and ANOVAs is mentioned. Here they have
to identify a scientific article (or more, if they like it, it is entirely free) and review how the authors describe the
tests, how they present them, and what they conclude from them. I am not looking for them to summarize the
article, but to be critical and say, in their own words, if the authors have used the appropriate evidence, if the
way of presenting the evidence is understandable, if the conclusion is based on the results obtained . For
example: was the sample size adequate? Did they present the degrees of freedom? Did they make a correct
interpretation of the P values? Do they have adequate figures? Are the figures understandable? Similarly,
these questions are guides only. You will be surprised to learn that not many published articles make proper
use of statistics.
Sample Solution
