Elsevier

Developmental Biology

Volume 348, Issue 1, 1 December 2010, Pages 3-11
Developmental Biology

Review
Categorical data analysis in experimental biology

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ydbio.2010.08.018Get rights and content
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Abstract

The categorical data set is an important data class in experimental biology and contains data separable into several mutually exclusive categories. Unlike measurement of a continuous variable, categorical data cannot be analyzed with methods such as the Student's t-test. Thus, these data require a different method of analysis to aid in interpretation. In this article, we will review issues related to categorical data, such as how to plot them in a graph, how to integrate results from different experiments, how to calculate the error bar/region, and how to perform significance tests. In addition, we illustrate analysis of categorical data using experimental results from developmental biology and virology studies.

Abbreviations

CI
confidence interval
CL
confidence level
SE
standard error

Keywords

Categorical data
Ternary diagram
Statistical significance
Confidence interval
Chi-square

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