Study questions

1. Discuss in class the consultation shown on video between the researcher and biometrician. Highlight any positive elements of the conversation. Consider what response the biometrician might have given to the final comments by the researcher on his sample size choice. Discuss the attributes that a biometrician should aim to achieve to become a good consultant.

2. Suppose that the researcher really wished to assess four genotypes but was constrained to having no more than 80 goats on experiment. Meet with another student to discuss the problem and prepare a discussion in class with one student playing the role of researcher and the other as biometrician.

3. A few extra goats were purchased as replacements for each genotype. Discuss why it might be useful to have these extra goats and when such goats might be used to substitute other goats during the course of the study. How would the researcher decide which 24 goats from the total number available for each genotype to allocate to the experiment?

4. The layout of a typical animal experiment is illustrated in one of the photographs. It can be seen that pens are situated in parallel rows. As explained in the case study it is sometimes a good idea to form blocks of goats so that each genotype x feeding regime is included within each block in order to account for temperature or air movement variation across the building. Include a sentence or two within the protocol to describe how this should be done for the experiment described and modify the structure of the analysis of variance accordingly.