Instructor Notes
Introductions
- Instructors
- Goals for the class
- Forecasting is increasingly important
- Difficult
- Ecology hasn’t historically done this well
- Need to study dynamics in order to understand this
* Need to learn how to work with dynamic (time-series) data
- Students
- Introduce yourself
- Tell us what do you hope to get out of the class
How the course will run
- Mix of paper discussions, R tutorials, and working on a forecasting project
- Discussion
- Read paper in advance
- Questions to think about provided to help guide thinking while reading
- Submit “confusions”, anything that you were confused about when reading the paper before class
- R tutorials
- Introductions to methods for working with dynamic data and forecasting
- Focus on time-series data, models, and forecasts
- I do, we do, you do
- We will demonstrate a concept, have you follow along on your computers,
and then have you do something very similar in class
- 2 credit course so other than reading and installing packages for R tutorials most work will be in class
- Grades
- Paper discussions (22%)
- Submit “confusions” before class
- Participating in paper discussions in class
- If you miss class you can submit written answers to the discussion questions
- R tutorials (44%)
- Submit completed R Tutorials via Canvas
- If you attend class you should be done (or almost done) with them by the end of the period
- If you can’t make class follow along with R tutorial notes
- Will include some sections for you to complete on your own
Introduction to the website
Introduction to Canvas
Questions about the course
- Any questions about how the course is going to work?
Opening discussion
- What kinds of forecasts are you familiar with?
- What do these forecasts for us and our society?
- Do we think we can forecast successfully in ecology?