Chapter 1

Question 1

physical biology

Answer 1

meant to be blending of math and biology

Question 2

theory

Answer 2

the act of trying to describe or derive general principles in ecology. unifying rules that help explain ecological complexity

Question 3

modeling

Answer 3

building a mathematical descriptor of some system in order to explain or predict an aspect of that system

Question 4

mathematical/computational model

Answer 4

abstract model that uses mathematical language to describe the behavior of a system
often formulated using ODEs or PDEs

Question 5

statistical model

Answer 5

attempts to describe relationship between observed quantities and independent variables
linear models, GAMMs

Question 6

reasons for a mathematical model

Answer 6

understanding nature and how something changes over time

making predictions about something that is going to happen in the future

Question 7

why use statistics

Answer 7

to confirm effects, estimate parameters, and predict outcomes

Question 8

three rules of statistics

Answer 8

confirmation
estimation
prediction

Question 9

example of confirmation

Answer 9

at low latitudes, there are larger numbers of species than at higher latitudes

Question 10

example of estimation

Answer 10

there are 4x higher the number of species at latitude 0 than latitude 48

Question 11

example of prediction

Answer 11

there will be 80 unique species of mammal at latitude 26

Question 12

hierarchy (most to least accurate)

Answer 12

position along a common scale
positions along non aligned scales
length, direction, angle
area
volume, curvature
shading, color saturation

Question 13

pie chart

Answer 13

isn’t great for displaying data

Question 14

dual axes graphs (issues)

Answer 14

scales can have a big impact on the viewer
they imply a casual relationship
often hideous

Question 15

histograms

Answer 15

plot of a single continuous variable divided up into bins

show the number of individuals that were recorded in each bin

Question 16

X-Y or scatter plot

Answer 16

shows the relationship between 2 continuous variables

Question 17

what does it mean to be continuous

Answer 17

variable can take on infinite, uncountable values

Question 18

bar charts

Answer 18

independent variable is categorical
dependent variable is continuous
can take a range of discrete values with names, usually fixed sets
can also be continuous data that’s been grouped or binned

Question 19

box and whisker plot

Answer 19

shows all data points
solid line is the median
box shows the interquartile range
whiskers extend to all outliers