About the Author

Hi,

I am a Reader* (proleptic) and Royal Society University Research Fellowship holder at the University of St Andrews.  My main interest is in understanding the generation to generation mechanics of adaptive evolution in contemporary populations.  I have a long-standing interest in developing statistical methods to make data from field studies talk map as closely as possible onto parameters that arise in evolutionary theory.

While some of my work is purely theoretical, much is about the practice of linking data to theory.  Most of my time, however, is spent on empirical work, especially on collecting data in the field.  Most of my field work is on the Soay sheep (Ovis aries) population on St Kilda, which is the subject of a long-term individual-based study (see more here, and here).

A growing side-line of my research is in more basic aspects of biological statistics.  I am particularly interested in taking a close look at what different common techniques, such as multiple regression analysis, do, and relating these fundamentals to how techniques are used in practice.  In many instances, I think it is possible that this exercise can greatly simplify practices in biostatistics.  For example,  I have (with a co-author, Graeme Ruxton) argued that taking a close look at what multiple regression actually does can greatly simplify how we interpret outputs of this method, and can allow us to do away with a whole lot of very convoluted practices associated with multiple regression analyses (see here).

I hope to bring this perspective of using statistical fundamentals to simplify biostatistics practices to my textbooks.  The books may initially seem like they could be overcomplicated: why is there a 160 page book on using R, and another similar book essentially on using R’s lm() function, when so many other biostatistics books cover so much more in a similar number of pages?  I hope you will find little has been made complicated, but rather that each potential complexity is handled thoroughly in turn.

Michael Morrissey

 

*A readership is roughly equivalent to an associate professor post, but a lingering oddity of ancient UK universities.