Re: Thermophiles and Selection Pressure Model

From: Joe Felsenstein (joe_at_removethispart.gs.washington.edu)
Date: 03/20/05 

Date: Sat, 19 Mar 2005 20:02:09 -0500 (EST)

In article <d1dr05$1994$1@darwin.ediacara.org>,
Perplexed in Peoria <jimmenegay@sbcglobal.net> wrote:
>One more request (to anyone that wishes to respond). My training in
>statistics is not very good. I made the mistake back in college of
>taking my statistics course from the math department, rather than
>from the economics department. I need a textbook to teach myself from.
>The ones I have tried recently are too cook-bookish and elementary.
>Would you care to recommend a text that covers the philosophical
>fundamentals rigorously, provides a good survey of the practical tools,
>and doesn't presume that I am frightened by subscripts?
>
>As part of my investigation of OOL, I think that I am going to need
>to develop some techniques to make inferences from other kinds of
>evolutionary data besides gene sequences - for example, I would like
>to be able to draw some conclusions from a sample of metabolic pathway
>graphs.

I can't really give an up-to-date answer, but there is now a level
of statistics course that is intermediate between the old "cookbook"
courses which were dreadful, and the full-bore full-year math stat sequences
where you learn a lot of proof technology such as martingales and
moment-generating functions.

If you can find one of these intermediate-level texts that may be just
what you want. I don't know the names of most of them. If you find a book
and want to know whether it is of this level, look in the index. If there
is an entry under "likelihood" but not much under moment-generating functions,
it might be right. Cookbook texts consider likelihood "too advanced", which
is why, when I went around lecturing on phylogenies and likelihoods, from
the 1980s on, I always had to start by explaining to the mystified audience
for 20 minutes what likelihood was, starting with the usual coin-tossing
example.

One way to start is to find out what texts are in use at your nearest
University (Case Western Reserve University? Stat 345-346?). 

-- 
Joe Felsenstein         joe@removethispart.gs.washington.edu
 Department of Genome Sciences and Department of Biology,
 University of Washington, Box 357730, Seattle, WA 98195-7730 USA

Relevant Pages

  • Re: why is probability and statistics a hard subject?
    ... I learned so-called classical statistics as an undergraduate engineer. ... It is from these that I fully came to appreciate that the _entire_ inferential import of any experiment, given any proposed model, is wholly contained within the likelihood function. ... The Bayesians cut through the Gordian knot by, in effect, elevating the likelihood function to the status of a probability density function. ... I realized that probabilities could be fuzzy: I considered the thought-experiment: If a friend fabricated an entirely new thumb-tack, never before seen or used anywhere, with an entirely new geometry. ...
    (sci.stat.math)
  • Re: Introduction to Data Analysis
    ... linear algebra, discrete mathematics, and intro probability. ... I've been googling and flipping through the texts I have, ... And I have Wackerly's "Mathematical Statistics with Applications" (for ...
    (sci.math)
  • Suggestion for Data Analysis Resources
    ... familiarity with the field is a little soft. ... I've been googling and flipping through the texts I have, ... I can produce quality work. ... And I have Wackerly's "Mathematical Statistics with Applications" (for ...
    (sci.stat.math)
  • Suggestion for Data Analysis Resources
    ... familiarity with the field is a little soft. ... I've been googling and flipping through the texts I have, ... I can produce quality work. ... And I have Wackerly's "Mathematical Statistics with Applications" (for ...
    (sci.math.num-analysis)
  • Re: Improvements in public health
    ... observation that the likelihood of polio's being endemic in a particular ... Statistics are only as good as the method used in ... No matter how many times you fulminate against "tally stroking", ... By the way "because PeterB doesn't want them ...
    (misc.health.alternative)
Quantcast