FW 552
Applied Sampling for Wildlife/Fish Studies
(Fall 2025)

Course Stuff

Schedule Syllabus

Book: We will be using quite a bit of Thompson. 2012. Sampling. Third Edition.

Readings: Come prepared to discuss the assigned reading on the next class after the readings were assigned.

  • What was interesting and useful? What did not make sense? What did you disagree with? What did you learn? Bring points to highlight and bring questions (make a list). Check each week’s link to see if there are listed reading questions.

Assignments: are assigned on the day they are listed; check Canvas for due date.

Schedule

Week Day Date In Class Topic Assignments Readings
1 Mo 25-Aug Introduction Discussion Post; Install R and RStudio. Hankin Ch. 2; Gerber et al. 2012
  We 27-Aug Paper Discussion / R and RMarkdown R Fundamentals Hankin Ch 1.1 and 1.5; Thompson Ch. 10.1 and 1.3
2 Mo 1-Sep No Class
  We 3-Sep Sampling I Discussion Post Boyd et al. 2023
3 Mo 8-Sep Paper Discussion; Big Data Paradox Quiz 1; Assignment Ch. 2 Thompson Ch. 2
  We 10-Sep Simple Random Sampling Thompson Ch. 3
4 Mo 15-Sep Confidence Intervals Quiz 2; Assignment Ch.3 Thompson Ch. 4
  We 17-Sep Sample Size Assignment Ch. 4 Thompson Ch. 5.0 - 5.4
5 Mo 22-Sep Proportions Assignment Ch. 5 Boyd et al. 2023 Ecology
  We 24-Sep Paper Discussion Thompson Ch. 11
6 Mo 29-Sep Stratified Sampling Quiz 3
  We 1-Oct Stratified Sampling Optimal Samples HW and Assignment Ch. 11 Thompson Ch. 12
7 Mo 6-Oct Cluster/Systematic Sampling Noon et al. 2006 and Nelson 2013
  We 8-Oct Paper Discussion Quiz 4 Thompson Ch. 13
8 Mo 13-Oct Mid-term Activity / No Class Mid-term Activity / Presentation
  We 15-Oct Mid-term Activity / No Class Mid-term Activity / Presentation
9 Mo 20-Oct Multi-stage Sampling Assignment Ch. 13 Stafford et al. 2006; Johnson et al. 2009
  We 22-Oct Paper Discussion Thompson Ch. 7
10 Mo 27-Oct Ratio Estimator Assignment Ch. 7 Collins 2007
  We 29-Oct Paper Discussion Quiz 5
11 Mo 3-Nov Adaptive Cluster
  We 5-Nov Review
12 Mo 10-Nov Design I
  We 12-Nov Design II
13 Mo 17-Nov Causal Inference
  We 19-Nov Paper Discussion
14 Mo 24-Nov No Class
  We 26-Nov No Class
15 Mo 1-Dec Causal Inference
  We 3-Dec Project
16 Mo 8-Dec Presentations I
  We 10-Dec Presentations II