Readers will learn to load and analyze data and produce professional visualizations. The mathematical content is kept to a bare minimum. Examples and exercises are drawn from a wide spectrum across biology, such as epidemiology, ecology, conservation biology, neuroscience, evolution, genetics, genomics and microbiology. Many exercises use realistic datasets published in the scientific literature, such as bacterial genome sequences, animal GPS tracking data, population time series and biodiversity inventories. References to the scientific literature are provided throughout.
Stilianos Louca is an Assistant Professor at the University of Oregon, Department of Biology. He holds a German Diplom in physics, a BSc in mathematics and a PhD in applied mathematics. He is an expert in biostatistics, mathematical modeling and bioinformatics. His research focuses on the ecology and evolution of microorganisms, mainly using computational approaches but also including experiments and field surveys. He has authored over 40 peer-reviewed publications in international scientific journals.