Department of Biology, VV71frid Laurier Unizersity B1393: Biostatistics; Fan 2022 Major Assignment # 1: The older you get, lhe better you get. Unless you 're a banana. - Betty Learning Objectives: This assignment is motivated by a desire to better understand (and describe) the nature of phenotypic variation associated with bananas. From a learning objective perspective, this project provides an introduction to: i) collecting, entering, and manipulating data on the computer, ii) exploratory data analysis; iii) descriptive statistics; iv) assessing normality; v) power analysis; vi) plotting beautiful, meaningful figures/infographics and vii) clearly describing your methods and interprrtation of your results. The requitrd format for this assignment will be a 'zine', which is described in a later section of this document. due i he Project motivation / Research Questions Bananas (Musca spp.) a fruit consumed worldwide and the fourth most important food cmp (after rice, wheat and maize) in the world (Prabha & Kumar 2015). Humans has been cultivating bananas for at least 8000 Yeats (and possibly over 10,000 years)! Bananas are gmwn in over 150 countries each year with over 100 million metric tonnes of fruit being produced ear year. The most commonly internationally exported type of banana are those from the "Cavendish" cultivars belong to the AAA genome group, which includes the cultivars that have three sets of chmmosome inherited flom the wild (ancestral) species Musa acuminate. The bananas develop from flowers that grow on stems of this large, herbaceous (non-woody) plant. Bananas make up 90/0 of the >6.5 billion dollars of fresh fruit imported in to and Agri-Food Canada, 2017), with 15.70 kg of bananas consumed on average by each Canadian annually. Given their ubiquitous naturr, bananas provide a great opportunity for us as biologists/statisticians to explore a number of different questions that are of gm-at relevance from both biological and economic perspectives. In this assignment, you will be trying to answer two questions: l) Alr them differences in the size* of the banana "finge1S' that are found on the inside and outside row of bananas on each "hand" of bananas? 2) Do the characteristics* ofa bunch of bananas being bough differ whetr they are bought locally or elsewhere? * VVhat do I mean by "size" and "characteristics"? The answers will depend on uu (see below)