Resources for Courses
This information is designed to provide a consistent set of resources for students, instructors and faculty in the Department of Biology at Queen’s University, on the follwing pages:
- The R & Excel Primer from BIOL 243
- COLLECTING DATA
- MAKING TABLES
- PLOTTING GRAPHS
- ANALYZING DATA
- WRITING REPORTS AND ESSAYS
Unless your instructor or lecturer says otherwise, undergraduates can assume that the guidelines provided here—for report and essay formats, for graphs, and for statistical analyses—are required (or recommended) in whatever course you are taking.
All of these resources and recommendations are consistent with current best practices in Biology (and indeed, in most of the sciences) and reflect the way we analyze and write about the data arising from our research for publication in scientific journals and the popular press.
In addition to the resources here, we recommend the following books for more detailed information on writing and on the collection and analysis of biological data.
- Pinker, S. 2014. The Sense of Style: The Thinking Person’s Guide to Writing in the 21st Century. Viking Adult, New York.
- Whitlock M and Schluter D. 2009. The Analysis of Biological Data. Roberts and Co, Colorado. [New edition due out in 2015]
and the following websites:
These resources are maintained by Bob Montgomerie. Let him know if you have further suggestions or see something here that should be corrected.