Nice quotes:

One of the chief services mathematics has rendered humanity is to put "common sense" where it belongs, on the topmost shelf next to the canister labelled "discarded nonsense".  (E. Bell 1940: Mathematics; Queen and servant of humanity).

To call in a statistician after the experiment is done may be no more than asking him to perform a post-morten examination: he may be able to say what the experiment died of. (R. A. Fisher)

"If you torture statistics enough they will confess to anything"
(Anonymous, on Radio 4 11/99, referring to the government's assertion that the UK tax burden was falling).

Downloadable lectures

Here are the powerpoint files I use in lectures at various levels, from 1st year undergraduate to MSc research methods.  Help yourself.
 

Basics
Quantitative techniques - a general introduction to the philosophy and practice of quantitative analyses.
general good advice on data handling - a must read for anyone doing a dissertation
The perils of multiple tests - why you shouldn't use multiple t tests instead of anova, and how to get away with it if you
                                            really insist!
Types of graphs
Data description
Experimental Design
Probabilities and the normal distribution

Inferential analyses
If you want a simple model to understand degrees of freedom (d.f.s), learn this model - easy as child's play!
An explantion of degrees of freedom
The Mann-Whitney U test
The Chi-square test
Student's t test
1 Way analysis of variance
2 Way analysis of variance
linear regression
Non-linear regression

Multivariate:
concepts of diversity
Multivariate stats 1: diversity, MLR
Multivariate 2: Ordinations, cluster analysis etc
 

MSc / Short course lectures:
Introductory talk about methodology, The Pahnke experiment

Self-test:
This Word document contains some questions that you should be able to answer once you have grasped the basics of numerical analyses.

A useful statistical table calculator

Data sets:
This is a temporary data storage site for files I need to make available quickly
PCA1 - strength data in police recruits
PCA 2 - Borneo trees
 

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last updated 27-11-08