ANSC 442:  Projects


ePortfolio (required)

In addition, all students will make sure that they have an active ePortfolio. If you don't have one already, details can be found here.  While all of the projects will be submitted and graded via ANGEL, most will result in a 'publishable unit' as an example of your work for the eportfolio.

Deal or No Deal (100 pts)

The assignment (designed to provide some experience in probability analysis, as well as constructing mathematical models based on economic value) is to create a spreadsheet containing all the 'data' collected during a complete game.  The students are then instructed to complete the spreadsheet with a graphed series of absolute means, weighted averages (based on remaining economic value of the game), and 'offers' made by the 'banker'.

In more specfic terms:
1.  create a graph that illustrates the average value of each case in the game and the banker's 'offers'.
2.  create a 2nd graph that illustrates the probability that your case contains the highest dollar value left on the board and the probability of the highest value being in any single 'unchosen' case.

Does this change your view of the game?  Does it change your decision-making process, were you to actually play?

Class Means, SD's and Variances (100 pts)

Per classroom assignment.

Family Analyses (100 pts)

There are many calculations that can be made from the data we've collected (per Table 9.5, p. 158 in Falconer and Mackay).  However, we'll focus on a few.

  1. Initially, calculate the regression equation of Offspring (mean of all sibs) and the mid-parent average (mean of parents) for each of the 2 phenotypes within the data set (i.e., height and weight).  As you can tell from Table 9.5 the 'b' value (or, slope) is equal to the heritability (V(A)/V(P)).

  2. For Body Wt and Height data sets:  Calculate the regression equation for Offspring and ONE parent (make one graph each for mother and father).  What are the heritability estimates and how do they compare to the estimates derived from the mid-parent average.
    (Bring your results to class, where we will compare heritability estimates based on either the mother or father)

  3. Create a table comparing all the heritability estimates.

FUTURE PROJECT (not for 2008)

ONLINE Blogging and Current Events Project (xxx pts)

Each student will be required to post 1 news article and 1 comment on the class blog each month (for February, March and April).  Each article post will be worth 30 pts and each comment will be worth 3.33 pts).