GrassBase - The Online World Grass Flora

Introduction

This simple statistics program can be used to do simple statistical calculations for small samples.

Taxonomy is concerned with the, theoretically infinate, population of a taxon in the field, but must usually work with the small sample of it preserved in herbaria. Samples inevitably vary due to the element of chance involved in their collection, and their interpretation must allow for this.

Statistics deals with the relation between samples and their hypothetical parent population, expressing this as the probability of randomly drawing such a sample from the population. A low probability implies that the sample differs significantly from expectation.

By convention p. 05. signifying that the chance of drawing a more deviant sample is less than 5%, is taken as the borderline between acceptance and rejection; at this level the sample affords no sound evidence that the hypothesis is true, and it is inferred to be false. The inference is more certain at p. 01 (less than 1% chance of a more deviant sample) and the program reports if this level is achieved. The probabilities are obtained from tables held in the program.

What tests can it do?

• Mean and Standard Deviation
• t test
• Correlation Coefficient
• Contingency table
• Genetic ratios

Where can I get the software?

You can download the software by clicking on this link.