Hammer, Ø. & D. Harper. 2006. Paleontological Data Analysis. – Oxford, Blackwell Publishing

Abstract

The book is divided into eight chaptersThe book is divided into eight chaptersThis book, as its title suggests, aims to introduce novices to mathematical (mostly statistical) methods for analysing palaeontological data. I think I am a good candidate to write this review, because of my deep aversion to stats. Do not get me wrong — I understand that statistics is an important subject, and (along with cement technology and proctology) I am jolly glad that someone takes the time to master the discipline. But forgive me, I am just not a natural number–cruncher! That said, I know that sooner or later most of us will have a research question which requires the use of statistics, and so I am interested in any book which could make this less painful. Hammer & Harper’s work seems to fit the bill nicely. It is clearly aimed at undergraduates, and could supplement a course or self–guided learning. However, it would also form a useful reference book any postgrad or researcher.

The book is divided into eight chapters. The first chapter gives an encouraging pep–talk about the relevance of statistics to palaeontology and alerts the reader to various pieces of helpful software. Most interesting of these is ‘PAST’, a freeware package developed by the authors which can help with many of the methods described in the book. The next two chapters cover all the ‘basic’ methods common to all statistics (some of which I was surprised to find I even remembered from school) and some of the more advanced multivariate methods. So far, so good; the layout of the book was inviting and explanations were clear. The subsequent chapters address specific fields of study (morphometrics, phylogenetics, palaeobiogeography and palaeoecology, time–series, biostratigraphy) and the specific methods used in them. Oh dear, heads–down for the tough stuff. Read more...