No Student’s t-test Further guidance on teaching statistics in Biology The Department for Education criteria for A-level Biology (GCE AS and A-level subject content for biology, chemistry, physics and psychology) include the following mathematical skills that are relevant to statistics. Mathematical skill Exemplification of mathematical skill in the Code context of biology MS 1.9 Select and use a statistical test Students may be tested on their ability to select and use: the chi-squared test to test the significance of the • difference between observed and expected results the Student’s t-test • the correlation coefficient. • MS Understand measures of dispersion, Students may be tested on their ability to: 1.10 including standard deviation and calculate the standard deviation • range understand why standard deviation might be a • more useful measure of dispersion for a given set of data, eg where there is an outlying result. The description of these skills has been included verbatim in AQA’s specification for AS and A-level Biology. Since these statements are not in bold type, they could all potentially be examined in both AS and A-level papers. In teaching the AQA Biology AS and A-level specifications, we recommend that correlation ‘the coefficient’ with which students become familiar is Spearman’s rank, as in the legacy specification. Ultimately, though, the choice is left to the teacher. Consequently, if a question in a written test requires students to recognise that a correlation coefficient is the appropriate statistical test to use with given data, the answers rank’, coefficient’ or any named ‘Spearman’s ‘correlation correlation coefficient will be credited. In written examinations, students be asked to perform simple calculations such as finding a mean value. Students will not be asked to perform a calculation using a statistical test (or to calculate the standard deviation of a mean). This policy reflects the recognition by examiners and
No Student’s t-test Further guidance on teaching statistics in Biology The Department for Education criteria for A-level Biology (GCE AS and A-level subject content for biology, chemistry, physics and psychology) include the following mathematical skills that are relevant to statistics. Code Mathematical skill Exemplification of mathematical skill in the context of biology MS 1.9 Select and use a statistical test Students may be tested on their ability to select and use: • the chi-squared test to test the significance of the difference between observed and expected results • the Student’s t-test • the correlation coefficient. MS 1.10 Understand measures of dispersion, including standard deviation and range Students may be tested on their ability to: • calculate the standard deviation • understand why standard deviation might be a more useful measure of dispersion for a given set of data, eg where there is an outlying result. The description of these skills has been included verbatim in AQA’s specification for AS and A-level Biology. Since these statements are not in bold type, they could all potentially be examined in both AS and A-level papers. In teaching the AQA Biology AS and A-level specifications, we recommend that ‘the correlation coefficient’ with which students become familiar is Spearman’s rank, as in the legacy specification. Ultimately, though, the choice is left to the teacher. Consequently, if a question in a written test requires students to recognise that a correlation coefficient is the appropriate statistical test to use with given data, the answers ‘Spearman’s rank’, ‘correlation coefficient’ or any named correlation coefficient will be credited. In written examinations, students be asked to perform simple calculations such as finding a mean value. Students will not be asked to perform a calculation using a statistical test (or to calculate the standard deviation of a mean). This policy reflects the recognition by examiners and
aqa-science-as-a-level-handbook.docx