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Unit of study_

OLET5610: Multivariate Data Analysis

When undertaking research and critically judging the research of others with many variables, a key approach is use of multivariate data analysis. This online unit provides comprehensive skills essential for postgraduate students doing multivariate data analysis and for critically judging the research of others. We focus on the underlying principles you need to explore multivariate data sets and test hypotheses. In so doing, the unit provides you with an understanding of how multivariate research is designed, analysed and interpreted using statistics. The unit will cover the commonly used multivariate data analyses of principal components analysis, cluster analysis, discriminant functions analysis and non-metric multidimensional scaling, as well as parametric and permutational hypothesis testing techniques. Examples of data will be cross-disciplinary, enabling students from many disciplines to appreciate the techniques. Analyses will use the R statistical environment, furthering student skills in this programming environment. By doing this unit, you will be able to use multivariate data analyses using a wide-range of data and present in a format for publication.

Code OLET5610
Academic unit Life and Environmental Sciences Academic Operations
Credit points 2
Prerequisites:
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None
Corequisites:
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None
Prohibitions:
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None

At the completion of this unit, you should be able to:

  • LO1. demonstrate a key understanding of multivariate data, it limitations and uses
  • LO2. design studies with multivariate data
  • LO3. use a number of ordination methods with statistical tests for multivariate data
  • LO4. able to perform multivariate analyses within the R statistical environment
  • LO5. able to present multivariate analysis graphs for publication

Unit outlines

Unit outlines will be available 2 weeks before the first day of teaching for the relevant session.