I intend to continue my study further on those aspects and try to find out about the courses given every time I found relevant program. I realize that there were not much courses in statistic. I wish to know how important actually statistic is to studies in those disciplines.
Statistical methodogy is useful in any ecological study. The issue is simply, statistics usefulness in summarizing data and providing an informative decision about the question understudy.
However, caution is to use the most relevant and reliable statistical method, otherwise it is easy to use a method that when analyzing the core of the study one realizes that the method is far from answering. Advice is, to use a decision making-tree in order to choose a statistical method.
There are other statisstical tools or methods used in the field of evolution and systematics, but they are special programmes that utilize similar function as the common statistical methodology. The likes are the Bayesian Statistics for evolution and systematics. I know my answer is very broad, but that is the simply reply to ease your question. I am not a guru in the field of statistics either.
I believe statistics is a vital component of ecology, evolution, systematics, and many other disciplines. It is the core of how we summarize data, compare groups, model trends and time-series, conduct cladistics, compute biological indices, and much more. If you are able to continue to study statistics, and thereby avoid many of the pitfalls other researches have encountered, then I recommend you do so. It will help illuminate issues that might have otherwise been overlooked, and can help in choosing the proper analyses at the right time. I hope this helps.
Ray
Thank you for your answers. I was simply wondering why statistics are not regarded as big concern on studies about ecology, evolution, and systematic. In fact, the publications keep saying that different statistical method will result differently and there were never a standard way to analyze something.
Statistic in ecological study is somewhat needed and ignored at the same time so I want to be sure how important it is.
Dear Sabhrina Gita Aninta,
all depends on what you are looking for. If you know proper use of numerical tools to find patterns that are provided by statistical analysis and numerical ecology you can improve your research and avoid some pitfails. Data analysis is not easy or obvious and often are these tools that help us see patterns and realize we do not see at first time.
Dear Sabhrina,
Statistics to those studies are like links of a chain. You just can not get things together without them. What is the good to discover a characteristic if you can not get to know how often it happens, or the probability of it to happen again? I have no idea of what this sciences would be if there were not statistics. And after discovering the important role of statistics to them, you need to know there are several methods to work with statistics. None is better than the other, they are just different. Each method serves for different objectives. Do not just try another opinion, start sorting your findings and present them with statistics and then you can decide by yourself if makes sense going on without it.
Dear Sabhrina,
As others have said, statistical methods are essential for all of these disciplines. They provide the tools to objectively test your ideas, and the framework for you to formulate your questions and collect data in such a way that the ideas can be tested.
Understanding different statistical methods takes time, and I find it's much easier when you are working with your own dataset than in a statistics class. Of course all methods have their strengths and weaknesses and as with many things in life, you can answer the same question taking different (or even several) statistical approaches. However, you should approach all problems by considering what sort of statistical approach is best to answer your problem.
Good luck!
Tristan
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