All - I'd like to endorse Mark's comments about texts.
I switched from several different texts (Zar, Whitlock and Schluter,
Hampton and Havel, Gotelli and Ellison), before settling on Glover and
Mitchell, 3rd ed. This text is well written, geared for an upper level
undergraduate or, as I use it, an Intro graduate level biostatistics
course. It has dozens of problems in each chapter for the students and
many well-worked out examples scattered throughout the text. It covers a
wide range of subjects that are useful to students just starting out in
statistics, from descriptive stats, hypothesis testing, parametric and
non-parametric techniques, experimental design, basic probability,
regression, and categorical analyses. This text is also printed as
paperback and is only $45.
I thought the Whitlock and Schluter book was well done, but it didn't
cover topics I needed for a graduate level course, and it was very
expensive. I have never liked Quinn and Keough - too difficult for
beginning students.
Gotelli and Ellison's book has very nice discussions of statistical
methods for use by ecologists, including Bayesian statistics, but last
time I looked (which was the first edition) it was deficient on
practical exercises for students. I'm not sure if this has been remedied
in later editions.
As I emphasize to my students, statistics is like a riding a bike - you
can learn as much theory as you want, but until you get on the bike
(i.e., do the problems!) you won't really master the subject. So I tend
to favor books with lots of practical exercises for the students.
Howie Neufeld
--
Dr. Howard S. Neufeld, Professor
Mailing Address:
Department of Biology
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Appalachian State University
Boone, NC 28608
Tel: 828-262-2683; Fax 828-262-2127
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