Lies, Damned Lies, and Spatial Statistics:

Can Variance Be Our Friend?

  • Introduction
    • Detective Story #1: Statistics of biological import
    • A little history on my general interest
    • Mr. Rogers versus Central Tendency -- Death Match!

  • Variance and Distributions
    • Definition(s) of Variance
    • Distributions
    • Detective Story #2: Using distributions: ANOVA and Poincare's Bread

  • Spatial Statistics: Variance in Space!
    • Characterizing variance in space
      • Detective Story #3: Faking Randomness
      • Complete Spatial Randomness (CSR)
      • Spatial Autocorrelation
    • Detective Story #4: "What's wrong with these estimates?"
    • The Variogram: a spatial decomposition of variance
    • Using the variogram for estimation: Kriging
    • Application: Mapping Alpine species

  • Conclusions