ABSTRACT
Despite the protestation of Disraeli and the wisdom of Freese, environmental practice includes the study of and use of statistical analysis of the results. The principal concept of statistics is that of variation. Variation is often found when conducting typical environmental health functions requiring the use of biostatistics, where a wide range of statistics are applied to an even wider range of topics in biology, such as toxicological or biological sampling protocols for air contamination, and other environmental functions applied to agriculture, forestry, fisheries, and other specialized areas. This chapter provides environmental practitioners with a survey of the basic statistical and data analysis techniques that can be used to address many of the problems that they will encounter on a daily basis. It covers the data analysis process, from research design to data collection, analysis, reaching conclusions, and, most importantly, the presentation of findings.
