Chapter 1 What is Ecological Data Science & How Will this Book Teach It?

[NOTE: This section is currently under development. The paper by Touchon & McCoy (2016) and its references lay out many of the reasons for the statistical focus of this book.]

“Ecological questions and data are becoming increasingly complex and as a result we are seeing the development and proliferation of sophisticated statistical approaches in the ecological literature. … It is no longer sufficient to only ask ‘whether’ or ‘which’ experimental manipulations significantly deviate from null expectations. Instead, we are moving toward parameter estimation and asking ‘how much’ and in ‘what direction’ ecological processes are affected by different mechanisms” (Touchon & McCoy 2016, Ecosphere, emphsis mine)

“Spreadsheets are often used as the basis of data collection and education; but this is potentially problematic since spreadsheets typically do not promote good data management practices…. The features of spreadsheets that make them desirable for the average researcher, such as extensibility, use of formatting for organization, embedding charts, make them undesirable for preparing data for long‐term archiving and reuse.”(Strasser & Hampton 2012 Ecosphere)