Versuchsplanung Agrarpflanzenwissenschaften

Objective

Profound knowledge about experimental design and statistical analyses are prerequisites for research in any experimental natural science discipline, including agricultural science. Only properly designed experiments or monitoring studies allow to answer research questions and reach scientific goals. Only detailed knowledge about statistics and design allows to critically question results, to understand published research studies, and to develop further science projects. Thus, students will need to gain profound knowledge about the application of various statistical tools, about the many ways to design research projects, and how to analyze data sets from their fields of study.

Content

In this course, the basics of the scientific method and experimental design (e.g., hypotheses, pseudo-replications, proper controls), but also ethics of scientific work will be discussed. Different experimental designs will be developed based on research questions the students are familiar with, ranging from random to nested, multi-factorial designs. Statistical tools will be presented, ranging from simple t-tests to multi-factorial co-variance analyses and multiple regressions (no multi-variate statistics though).

Resources