YES-course: Theory and practice of statistical data analysis block course

by Prof. Vasily Zaburdaev

The course took place from 18.06. to 28.06. at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Light with a followed tutorial.

The main goal of the course was to provide the basics of theoretical and practical skills to analyze and report data. Ideally, at the end of the course the students would know what actually the statistical tests tell them and what the limits of their application are, why you have to "do at least three measurements, but better at least six", and what the box plot shows.

The course consisted of nine lectures and  practical tutorials and contains a mixture of data analysis and theoryoriented sessions. Prof. Zaburdaev and his tutor aimed to provide all necassary mathematical knowledge to follow the main ideas of the course and thus it was suitable for Bachelor, Master and PhD candidates.

Main topics of the course were:

• Mean, SD, SEM and presentation of data
• Student´s t-test
• Assumptions behind the t-test
• Chi-aquared and linear regression
• Statistical inference on experimental data
• Probability, random variables (RV) and expectation
• Examples of RVs; probability distributions
• Non-parametric tests
• Basics of particle tracking