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Semester 1

Biology 2A: Data Exploration in Biology (BILG08024)

Subject

Biology

College

SCE

Credits

20

Normal Year Taken

2

Delivery Session Year

2023/2024

Pre-requisites

Course Summary

This course will involve interactive class teaching with coding and data analysis. Students will be taught data science using example datasets, and this learning will be reinforced by application to student-selected datasets from a variety of biological disciplines.

Course Description

This course aims to give students the skills to work with biological datasets to present, summarise and explore patterns in a wide range of datasets using python, pandas and seaborn. We will take the student through guided examples, supported exploration and on to independent work. For each course topic, student will apply the concepts they have learned to complex research datasets. Student groups will choose a 'real world' dataset to work with at the start of the course, with each being taken from a broad range of biological disciplines to ensure that students can select a topic with which to develop and test hypotheses. The course will be taught in workshops with short lectures introducing the topic then group practise with example and complex datasets using Jupyter notebooks. Topics covered include: Cleaning and organising datasets gathered in field or lab or downloaded; Summarise data series using descriptive statistics; Explore datasets to look for associations and inter-group differences; Use appropriate data summaries and visualisations for the presentation of data analyses; Collate information from many groups and discuss data analysis results in a biological context.

Assessment Information

Written Exam 0%, Coursework 100%, Practical Exam 0%

Additional Assessment Information

100% in course assessment

view the timetable and further details for this course