Summary:
Embarking on a new research endeavor can be a daunting task. User guides, books, and published articles are written for an audience that already has some background experience in the field. Undergraduate students like you, who are at the very…
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Embarking on a new research endeavor can be a daunting task. User guides, books, and published articles are written for an audience that already has some background experience in the field. Undergraduate students like you, who are at the very beginning of their research careers, often struggle to make sense of these documents. Furthermore, students like you often attempt to do so while balancing heavy course loads. Thus, I have written this document to help ease the burden so that you have more time to ponder the interesting scientific questions instead of digging through pages upon pages of documentation. I assume that you already have some basic familiarity with R before starting this project. I also assume that you have a well devised plan for your experimental design, including the variables you want to collect, the sampling scheme, and of course the questions of interest. Finally, I assume that you have taken a basic course in statistics and have a research mentor that can assist you with more advanced statistical methods. This is not an exhaustive user manual, but rather a guide to help you get started on your journey with geometric morphometrics.