Date of Award:

8-2012

Document Type:

Thesis

Degree Name:

Master of Science (MS)

Department:

Mathematics and Statistics

Committee Chair(s)

John R. Stevens

Committee

John R. Stevens

Committee

Christopher D. Corcoran

Committee

Daniel Coster

Abstract

An experiment was performed on two groups of mice, the first group receiving a refined wheat diet, and the second group receiving a whole wheat diet. The levels of abundance of hundreds of bacteria in the guts of the mice were measured. Of interest was whether the levels of these bacteria were different depending on type of diet. In addition, it was desired to examine differences by diet in all of the families of bacteria. These family relationships are represented in a tree, and it was determined helpful to color the branches of this tree based on the differences of their corresponding families. Performing the necessary statistical calculations and coloring the branches by hand would not be a quick process; an automated method would greatly increase the efficiency of these calculations. Therefore, SigTree, a piece of computer software (an R package), was written. It is able to create a customized, colored tree plot based on its calculations of the levels of difference of the individual bacteria, as well as the levels of difference of the families of bacteria. SigTree is able to handle not only the motivating mouse diet example, but also experiments that fall into the appropriate framework.

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c5e2aa7cf1be465b0abf146f6caef686

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This work made publicly available electronically on September 18, 2012.

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