Ordination is a useful tool for visualising multivariate data. This post focuses on explaining and demonstrating principal component analysis in the R programming language. Examples will use morphological data from six species of fig wasps in...

Linear models in statistics are often taught as a series of separate tests to be run for data sets with different properties (e.g., categorical versus continuous independent variables). Here I generate a simulated data set, then use it to show...

Individual-based models (IBMs; also called `agent-based models’) model systems of discrete individuals in silico (i.e., in a computer simulation, developed by writing and running code). The idea is to represent individuals (often, but not always, biological organisms) as discrete entities...

Here I introduce the use of (pseudo)random number generation, randomisation, bootstrap, and Monte Caro methods in R. Knowledge of these tools can be especially useful in statistical hypothesis testing and biological modelling (e.g., individual-based models). This introduction was originally written...

This document is a practical guide for getting started using for and while loops in R. My goal is to help readers who are familiar with R, but unfamiliar with using loops in R, get started coding with loops. This...

This document is a practical guide to getting started using Rmarkdown to write scientific documents, and particularly scientific manuscripts. My objective is to focus on the key features needed for scientific writing and thereby help the reader get started...

This document is intended to be a practical and informal guide to start using version control as a research scientist. It was originally written for an event in Stirling Coding Club. Here I will first explain what version control...

As part of the ConFooBio project at the University of Stirling, my colleagues and I have released the new R package GMSE, with v0.2.2.7 currently available on CRAN and GitHub. The GMSE...

Author’s Note: This post was inspired by a recent discussion at the PEGE Journal Club at the University of Stirling. A version of this post also appears on the journal club website.

Conceptual unification of disparate phenomena is...

Working with arrays of data (e.g., numeric vectors and matrices) is routine for scientific researchers doing statistics or modelling. In programming languages with which most researchers are probably familiar (e.g., R, python, and MATLAB), setting values...

It is widely under-appreciated that active inbreeding – and especially biparental inbreeding – can be adaptive and therefore favoured by natural selection. Biparental inbreeding specifically refers to the situation in which two different, but genetically related, organisms breed and thereby...