Practical Statistics for Environmental and Biological Scientists

Used for University class

very useful to any biologist

This book was received in perfect condition. I think the book is well written and does give a lot of examples, with all the information it is gives you. It starts of with a very basic understanding of statistics and its application into biology and environmental science and expands further on the application of statistics and experimental design. The book is broken it to parts which make things flow very well. One of the better text books I have had to read.

I have read this book for three times and whenever I confuse with the principle of some stat measures, I come back to this book before go to other book for the detail. Even not provide comprehensive details, I reccomend this book for newcomers to utilize stat for your own data analysis, especially in bioscience.

If, like many researchers, you are not a statistician (and aren't interested in becoming one), then this is the text you want. It explains how and why the various tests work, when to use them, and their strengths and weaknesses. What it glosses over (but does not ignore completely) is the derivation of the math that makes the tests work. As the author states in the preface, "Memorizing formulae will be of very little practical use to you." Because most analysis is performed with a computer, the challenge is knowing which test to pick, not how to "prove" the test itself. In short, start with this book for a comprehensible overview and and then cherry-pick more advanced texts and articles for the nuts and bolts of the technique if you decide you need them.

I use this text in my undergraduate statistics class. I found that the single sample t test example in the text - was given the sample mean of 2.99. However to get the answer exactly as in the Appendix it was necessary to keep the 3 significant digits in the sample mean. The variance is so small that by using a rounded up sample mean, the students were getting ' a different ' calculated t statistic. I hope this minor correction will be made in future editions. The Appendix looked wrong but it was merely a rounding issue.

This is a wonderful aid to the Research Biologist who requires a little assistance when it comes to statistics. It provides simple and general explanations as well as the detailed mathematics behind these methods. Well written and worth it.

I use this book in a graduate level class in college. It is a great book for those who are just starting out in their thesis work, or who are just beginning to develop their ideas. It gives a lot of basic, but necessary information.