United States
£ GBP
Now available in paperback, this is a how-and-why-to-do-it book. It presents sophisticated statistical methods for analysing continuous-time records of behaviour, aiming to integrate recent developments in ethology, mathematical modelling, statistics, and technology. These new methods are explicitly designed to handle sequential or simultaneous acts where neither the duration nor the sequence of the acts is predetermined, which is often the case if the time scale on which behaviour is studied is relatively short. The authors show how to analyse behavioural data starting with a basic model, the continuous time Markov chain. They then indicate how and when this model can be generalized and demonstrate the suitability of their approach for detecting, for example, the effects of different experimental treatments or of changes in the social or physical environment. Competitive interactions such as predator-prey or host-parasite are also good subjects for this type of analysis. There are eight chapters and many worked examples, leading the reader through the mathematical processes and their applications. Students and researchers in all fields of behavioural science will find Statistical Analysis of Behavioural Data incomparably useful for planning and performing data analysis.
- Introduction
- Preliminary inspection of the observations
- Analysis of time-inhomogeneity
- Tests for exponentiality
- Tests of sequential dependency properties
- Simultaneous tests
- Analysis based on a (semi)-Markov description
- Examples of analyses based on continuous-time Markov chain modelling
- Appendices
- References
- Author index
- Subject index
"Even the chapters, which are marked by the authors as being mathematically difficult, can be understood when the book is carefully read [...] an excellent text book for seminars which consider the analysis of behavioural data sets. My opinion is that the authors have done a good job. This book can be recommended to students and colleagues who are interested in the analysis of time structured data."
- Jürgen Tomiuk, Abt. für Klinische Genetik der Univ. Tübingen, Ethology Vol. 95, No. 2, 1993
"Two categories of readers may find this book particularly useful and interesting: researchers in the behavioral sciences who have some working knowledge of Markov processes and research statisticians who are eager to explore the fascinating and rapidly developing area of stochastic behavioral processes [...] a well-written guidebook for practitioners and an appetizer for research statisticians. Instructors will be surprisingly pleased by the authors' modern statisticial pedagogical viewpoint in presenting the material. All in all, Statistical Analysis of Behavioral Data [...] is a great combination: a very useful book in stochastic modeling for behavioral scientists and yet a very fascinating applications book for statisticians [...] it would be a valuable addition to many institutional libraries."
– James H. Matis, Texas A & M University, Journal of the American Statistical Association, September 1994
"this is a much-needed book [...] a research monograph detailing the work of the Leiden school: as such it is extremely useful and will help enormously in making their methods widely available"
– Richard Sibly, University of Reading, British Journal of Mathematical and Statistical Psychology (1994)
