Basic Statistics in Environmental and Agricultural Sciences Using R December 2023 Batch
Five-day certificate course for practitioners and early career researchers working in the field of environmental, agricultural, and allied sectors with no prior experience in R or statistics.
Introduction
Professionals in agricultural and environmental sciences often deal with large volumes of data that require statistical processing to extract meaningful information. The course aims to provide a basic understanding of some of the most commonly used statistical techniques in agricultural and environmental sciences research and analysis. The course provides extensive hands-on training using R programming language, without overwhelming the participants with deep mathematical concepts behind the statistical formulae.
What does the course offer?
The 5‑day certificate course will help participants to learn the essential statistical methods used in hypothesis testing using the data relevant to environmental, agricultural and allied sciences. The participants will be provided with a theoretical basis of each statistical test, reinforced by extensive hands-on sessions on realistic data.
The course also envisions acting as a primer for learning R programming language, which is becoming increasingly popular among practitioners and academics due to its open-source nature and ease of handling varied kinds of data.
At the end of the course, the participants are expected to develop a better understanding of statistical tools and to feel comfortable adopting R programming for routine data analytics. The participants will also have an opportunity to work on the data of their choice and present their findings.
Pedagogy
The course includes lectures and hands-on sessions on the data provided by the instructors. Lectures will assist in teaching the basic concepts related to statistical methods, while hands-on tutorials will give exposure to how to use the R for analyzing the data. The participants will also have the opportunity to work on their own data.
Learning objectives
On successful completion of the course, participants will:
Get familiar with R programming language
Identify suitable statistical tools for hypothesis testing
Be able to understand the relationship between variables in environmental and agricultural data
Be able to interpret results from data analysis
Structure of the course
The course will be offered from 11 – 15 December 2023. The five-day training is divided into lectures for conceptual understanding of hypothesis testing and hands-on sessions in R for processing of data. It will end with a final presentation from participants about the utility of data analytics in their work and in the project they would be working on during the workshop.
| Date | Lecture | Hands-on session |
|---|---|---|
| Monday, 11 Dec 2023 | Descriptive Statistics — univariate; measures of central tendency and dispersion. | Installation of R; data importing; data visualisation; descriptive statistics using R. |
| Tuesday, 12 Dec 2023 | Descriptive Statistics — bivariate data analysis;- correlation and regression analysis. | Performing correlation and regression on different datasets. |
| Wednesday, 13 Dec 2023 | Inferential Statistics — probability distribution, sampling distribution, hypothesis testing. | One and two sample hypothesis testing for mean, proportion, variance, correlation, and regression. |
| Thursday, 14 Dec 2023 | Inferential Statistics — Tests for multiple samples — ANOVA. | R session on ANOVA. |
| Friday, 15 Dec 2023 | Presentation of results by the participants followed by group discussion. | Closing session — Course summary, followed by group reflection, written feedback, and presentation of certificates. |
Apply by 20 September 2023
Participants from NGOs, academicians, early career researchers, and PhD scholars working in environmental, agricultural, and allied sectors. The course teaches fundamental statistics and no prior experience with R is required.
All interested participants need to fill out the application form. All the participants are required to submit a short description of their specific motivation to join the certificate program. This should be done using the apply button at the beginning of this page.
Last date to apply: 20 September 2023
Announcement of results: by 30 September 2023
Last day for the fee payment: by 20 October 2023
The decision of the evaluation committee will be final.
General: Rs. 5900
Field Practice Organisation (FPO) associated with Azim Premji Foundation, including Azim Premji University: Rs. 1180
Partial fee waivers are available for deserving research scholars
All rates are inclusive of GST and relevant taxes.
The course fee does not include accommodation. The University can arrange accommodation for 06 days at an additional cost.
For shared rooms: INR 413 per day
For single rooms: INR 826 per day
Requests for accommodation must be made at the time of application. Alternatively, participants can make their own arrangements.
All other costs, such as travel to and from Bengaluru, local travel, stay and meals must be borne by participants.
All rates are inclusive of GST and relevant taxes.
Course Faculty
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Ankur Jamwal
Ankur teaches environmental science at Azim Premji University, and specialises in ecotoxicology and ecophysiology. He has over 10 years of experience in research and teaching courses related to aquaculture, animal physiology, and environmental toxicology. Ankur’s research deals with understanding the effects of environmental stress on the physiology of aquatic animals and has experience working in both field and laboratory-based research.
Before joining Azim Premji University, Ankur worked at Dr. Rajendra Prasad Central Agricultural University (RPCAU), Pusa, Bihar for more than four years. Before that, he was a Postdoctoral Scientist at the University of Lethbridge, Canada. He extensively uses R programming in his research and loves to teach and learn more about the applications of R language in science communication.
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Neeti
Neeti teaches sustainability at Azim Premji University, with experience of more than 20 years in the field of data analytics and geospatial technology. Her research focuses on using various statistical techniques and geospatial tools to address questions in the field of forestry, agriculture, and disaster management.
She has been using R for more than a decade for both spatial and non-spatial data analysis. Before joining Azim Premji University, she worked at Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), Clark University, Goddard Space Flight Centre, Boston University, Woods Hole Research Centre (WHRC), and TERI School of Advanced Studies (TERI SAS)
Fee Structure
| INR 5900 | General |
|---|---|
| INR 1180 | Field Practice Organisation (FPO) associated with Azim Premji Foundation, including Azim Premji University |
Partial fee waivers are available for deserving research scholars
All rates are inclusive of GST and relevant taxes.