Books by Mark Gardener

This is a book about the scientific process and how you apply it to data in ecology. You will learn how to plan for data collection, how to assemble data, how to analyze data and finally how to present the results. The book uses Microsoft Excel and the powerful Open Source R program to carry out data handling as well as producing graphs.Statistical approaches covered include: data exploration; tests for difference - t-test and U-test; correlation - Spearman's rank test and Pearson product-moment; association including Chi-squared tests and goodness of fit; multivariate testing using analysis of variance (ANOVA) and Kruskal-Wallis test; and multiple regression.Key skills taught in this book include: how to plan ecological projects; how to record and assemble your data; how to use R and Excel for data analysis and graphs; how to carry out a wide range of statistical analyses including analysis of variance and regression; how to create professional looking graphs; and how to present your results.New in this edition: a completely revised chapter on graphics including graph types and their uses, Excel Chart Tools, R graphics commands and producing different chart types in Excel and in R; an expanded range of support material online, including; example data, exercises and additional notes & explanations; a new chapter on basic community statistics, biodiversity and similarity; chapter summaries and end-of-chapter exercises.Praise for the first edition:This book is a superb way in for all those looking at how to design investigations and collect data to support their findings. - Sue Townsend, Biodiversity Learning Manager, Field Studies Council[M]akes it easy for the reader to synthesise R and Excel and there is extra help and sample data available on the free companion webpage if needed. I recommended this text to the university library as well as to colleagues at my student workshops on R. Although I initially bought this book when I wanted to discover R I actually also learned new techniques for data manipulation and management in Excel - Mark Edwards, EcoBloggingA must for anyone getting to grips with data analysis using R and excel. - Amazon 5-star reviewIt has been very easy to follow and will be perfect for anyone. - Amazon 5-star reviewA solid introduction to working with Excel and R. The writing is clear and informative, the book provides plenty of examples and figures so that each string of code in R or step in Excel is understood by the reader. - Goodreads, 4-star review

Microsoft Excel is a powerful tool that can transform the way you use data. This book explains in comprehensive and user-friendly detail how to manage, make sense of, explore and share data, giving scientists at all levels the skills they need to maximize the usefulness of their data. Readers will learn how to use Excel to: * Build a dataset - how to handle variables and notes, rearrangements and edits to data. * Check datasets - dealing with typographic errors, data validation and numerical errors. *Make sense of data - including datasets for regression and correlation; summarizing data with averages and variability; and visualizing data with graphs, pivot charts and sparklines. *Explore regression data - finding, highlighting and visualizing correlations. *Explore time-related data - using pivot tables, sparklines and line plots. *Explore association data - creating and visualizing contingency tables. *Explore differences - pivot tables and data visualizations including box-whisker plots. *Share data - methods for exporting and sharing your datasets, summaries and graphs. Alongside the text, Have a Go exercises, Tips and Notes give readers practical experience and highlight important points, and helpful self-assessment exercises and summary tables can be found at the end of each chapter. Supplementary material can also be downloaded on the companion website. Managing Data Using Excel is an essential book for all scientists and students who use data and are seeking to manage data more effectively. It is aimed at scientists at all levels but it is especially useful for university-level research, from undergraduates to postdoctoral researchers.

Interactions between species are of fundamental importance to all living systems and the framework we have for studying these interactions is community ecology. This is important to our understanding of the planets biological diversity and how species interactions relate to the functioning of ecosystems at all scales. Species do not live in isolation and the study of community ecology is of practical application in a wide range of conservation issues.The study of ecological community data involves many methods of analysis. In this book you will learn many of the mainstays of community analysis including: diversity, similarity and cluster analysis, ordination and multivariate analyses. This book is for undergraduate and postgraduate students and researchers seeking a step-by-step methodology for analysing plant and animal communities using R and Excel.Microsoft's Excel spreadsheet is virtually ubiquitous and familiar to most computer users. It is a robust program that makes an excellent storage and manipulation system for many kinds of data, including community data. The R program is a powerful and flexible analytical system able to conduct a huge variety of analytical methods, which means that the user only has to learn one program to address many research questions. Its other advantage is that it is open source and therefore completely free. Novel analytical methods are being added constantly to the already comprehensive suite of tools available in R.Mark Gardener is both an ecologist and an analyst. He has worked in a range of ecosystems around the world and has been involved in research across a spectrum of community types. His knowledge of R is largely self-taught and this gives him insight into the needs of students learning to use R for complicated analyses.

Conquer the complexities of this open source statistical language R is fast becoming the de facto standard for statistical computing and analysis in science, business, engineering, and related fields. This book examines this complex language using simple statistical examples, showing how R operates in a user-friendly context.