Imagine that you have been hired by the ADF&G to analyze
data from a Nawkwasina coho study. The data can be found
here (right click to save). Week is the
week # in the field season, the other variables are Location (where in
the river was the fish caught), Length, Sex, and Condtion.
You will need to answer three of the following questions.
- The field biologist suspects that larger fish came later in the
run. Is there strong evidence that this is the case?
- In many species there is a gender difference in size. Do male and
female coho salmon in this run differ?
- The condition of the fish is given as bright, blush, or dark. These
can be taken as a rough indicator of how long the fish has been in
fresh water (they get darker the longer they are in the fresh water).
Is there any relationship between the length of the fish and its
condition?
- Fish were captured in four different locations; Tide Water, stream
reach 1, stream reach 2, and stream reach 3. Is there a relationship
between the condition of the fish and the location it was caught?
Your writeup should include what you did, the assumptions you
made, and your conclusions. Include relevant hypotheses, analysis and
plots. Do not assume that your reader will automatically know what you did.
Please turn in a typed response. If you know how to put figures and/or
tables in Word, you can do so, otherwise be sure to make neat, well labeled,
plots and/or tables on separate sheets.
Use the following overall organization:
- Introduction (provide context for the material that follows
including information about the data and the research questions of
interest)
- Methods (in this section you should indicate the various
graphical and analytical techniques used to get at each question of
interest)
- Results (this section includes only the results of the
methods/techniques described in the Methods section; do not include
practical conclusions until the next section)
- Discussion (this section should give the practical
implications of the results as well as a discussion of potential
problems (violation of assumptions, for example)
If you have difficulty with getting the data into the computer, please
ask for help. I do not want you spending most of your time getting
frustrated with the quirks of the computer and/or software.