Stat 6390 Environmental Statistics Syllabus Stat 6390 Environmental Statistics Course Information

Abstract

Topics • One-sample estimation and hypothesis tests • Two-sample estimation and hypothesis tests • Regression and ANOVA • Generalized linear models Important components of these topics include power, sample size determination, and observable differences for methods based on normality assumptions as well as alternatives to those assumptions. The statistics programming language R will be used heavily in this course. An extension to R called Rstudio also is recommended. Grading Policy Course grade will be based on quizzes, homework projects and the final project. A very useful extension for R is another freely available open-source package, RStudio. This package provides an intelligent editor for script files, it allows specific projects to be assigned to their own directories to aid in organization of your work, RStudio includes an interactive debugger to help identify and correct errors, and it provides an interactive GUI for easily exporting graphics to image files for incorporation into documents. Background Envirnonment regulation had its roots in public health. The U.S. Public Health Service was formed in 1912 from several other organizations. Its initial focus was on water-borned diseases such as typhoid. Later the PHS developed standards for air quality in the industrial workplace in addition to those for water quality. However, it was the tremendous industrial growth after WWII, and all the highly visible pollution associated with that growth, that caused some to call for federal regulatory action. The large scale of factories in the chemical, plastics, petroleum, and automotive industries meant that problems associated with their waste products no longer were confined to a single town, county, or even state. I was born in grew up in South Florida after WWII and witnessed first-hand some significant environmental problems. Once home air conditioning became widely available, people began migrating from northern states to Florida. As a result its coastal cities grew rapidly. The attitude among many of those involved with building public infrastructure to support this growth was that the ocean was so vast it never could be polluted, and so cities built large pipes into the ocean to discharge raw sewage. But then under certain weather conditions beaches had to be closed due to bacterial contamination from those sewage outfalls. Another major problem came from the expansion of farms below Lake Okeechobee. Water from much of the interior of central and south Florida drains into the lake causing it to expand and contract depending on seasonal rainfall. …