10 Boss Fight

Wow. You’ve made it to the end of the BIOS103 QS course! Congratulations. Over the semester, you’ve built an impressive toolbox of skills. By now, you should be able to:

  • Import data files in Excel and R.
  • Clean, subset, and filter data in Excel and R.
  • Generate tables of summary statistics in Excel and R.
  • Perform a one-way ANOVA in Excel and R, and interpret the results.
  • Conduct post-hoc tests using Bonferroni-corrected t-tests in Excel.
  • Perform post-hoc tests using Tukey’s HSD in R.
  • Conduct linear regression in Excel and R, and interpret the results.
  • Generate boxplots, scatterplots, and histograms in Excel and R.
  • Perform a two-way ANOVA in R.
  • Conduct multiple linear regression (MLR) in R.
  • Use pre-existing R code to parse FASTA files and perform basic bioinformatics on DNA sequences.
  • Leverage R code and packages to perform automated image analysis on multiple files.

Phew! When you put it all together, that’s an incredible skill set.

But it’s not over just yet. Are you ready for one last challenge? Enter the Boss Fight: Four questions to test your mettle. Three have been adapted from the past four weeks (don’t worry, no yeast or mushrooms this time!). The final question is a fun one to wrap things up.

This time, I’m not giving you any pre-written code. You’ll need to recycle and tweak what you’ve already encountered in Chapters 6, 8, and 9.

And here’s your final learning objective:

  • Learn that it’s OK to forget everything when it comes to code.

Coding isn’t about memorising everything, it’s about knowing where to look and how to apply what you find. I’ve been coding for over a decade, and I still Google solutions regularly. The important thing is that you are now equipped with the tools and confidence to dive back into R next September, ready to tackle advanced quantitative skills with a solid foundation.

As always, the demonstrator team will provide direct support in the Workshop channel on Microsoft Teams for this final challenge. For those attending in person, I’ll be bringing a limited stock of mince pies to the Thursday 9–11 AM workshop session in the Randall Building. You’re all warmly invited to join us.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Rob Treharne. 11/12/2024