Prerequsites

Exposure to modeling of biological systems and some experience with statistical model fitting (e.g. FISH 458). Students should be familar with: (a) surplus production models, (b) age-structured models, (c) maximum likelihood estimation, (d) probability distributions such as the normal, gamma, and beta. Students are expected to have access to laptops, and the R package. R can be downloaded for free from the R project web-site.

The course examples and homework assignments require proficiency in R, and the use of maximum likelihood methods within R to fit models to data. Students who do not have these prerequisties should contact the instructor.

Four homework assignments and one major project.The homeworks and the project are each worth 50% of the final grade. Note that 10 points (out of 100) will be deducted for each day that an assignment is submitted late.

The University of Washington is committed to providing access, equal opportunity and reasonable accommodation in its services, programs, activities, education and employment for individuals with disabilities. To request academic accommodations due to a disability, please contact Disabled Student Services, 448 Schmitz, (206)543-8924 (V/TTY). If you have a letter from Disabled Student Services indicating that you have a disability which requires academic accommodations, please present the letter to the instructor so we can discuss the accommodations needed for this class.

Washington state law requires that UW develop a policy for accommodation of student absences or significant hardship due to reasons of faith or conscience, or for organized religious activities. The UW’s policy, including more information about how to request an accommodation, is available at Religious Accommodations Policy. Accommodations must be requested within the first two weeks of this course using the Religious Accommodations Request form.