MATH1041: Statistics for Life Sciences

- 9 x online tutorials on Mobius (10% altogether)
- 1 x midterm (15%)
- 1 x assignment (15%)
- Final exam (60%)

No assumed knowledge is required for the course.

I did this course purely because it was going to be a WAM boost but I'm disheartened by a few things from this course. My biggest complaint is the assignment. I'll get to that in a bit.

The course serves to be one of two math-intensive courses for people doing a life science degree, the other being MATH1031 which is more akin to the content you find on MATH1131. MATH1041 is an introductory course on statistical practices for people who may not want to do any more mathematics courses beyond this course.

For the most part, the course was just revision from when I took MATH2901 and a lot of the content felt very familiar to me. You learn about the basic probability theory principles as well as the basic statistical inferences that permeate any statistics major (confidence interval, hypothesis testing, inferences about the mean). The midterm was also really nice, we were given enough practice to perform well in the test and it felt like a nice 15% to get. The tutorials felt very dry and I felt that the tutors didn't want to be there (or at least I got that energy from them), which made me not want to go to the tutorials.
Then came the assignment. The assignment was convoluted and long, I felt like I was answering the same question 3 or so times. I was confused a lot of the times because the questions were worded awkwardly and left a lot of room for interpretation. When anyone tried to clarify a question, the answers were always the same: You're being assessed on it. When addressing a missing unit in the assignment, the lecturers didn't bother making a public announcement. Instead they simply left a comment in the thread that was so difficult to find because it was so hidden among the other questions that arose from the assignment. As a result, I had to redo one of the graphs because I realised oh there WAS a unit attached. I felt that, if we got marked down for it, there would be some major complaints. The marking was a bit controversial as well. A lot of assumptions that were not made clear from the assignment specifications were vital to how you were supposed to answer. This made the assignment even more frustrating to do. There were parts of the sample answer that I was not happy with and it felt like the markers were rushing to get marking done. Losing full marks for small errors should never be permitted.

- 2 x 2 hour live lecture.
- 1 x 1 hour tutorial.

1.5/5 (the average MATH1041 student, though, may feel the difficulty is about 3-3.5/5)

Yes.

- Lecturers: Dr. Nicole Mealing and Dr. Laure Helme-Guizon

Lecture slides are sufficient.

2/5

The recommended textbook is Introduction to the Practices of Statistics.

2021, Term 2

85 HD.