Reviews for Numerical ecology

The average rating for Numerical ecology based on 2 reviews is 4 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2019-02-05 00:00:00 Susan Eichner The problems here, are in a physics context, called Fermi-problems after the physicist who loved posing and solving them. This book concentrates on the environmental side of science, which is even more relevant now than when the book was first published. And this approach is essential to risk management - getting rough answers very quickly with only the information at hand. Q. How can you get a rough answer to a quantitative question when you have very little information? A. You most probably can get a rough guess at the information you need, and if you have a good understanding of the subject matter, you can see what the required relationships are. Mental arithmetic is usually all you need after that.

Review # 2 was written on 2014-12-20 00:00:00 Jean York This is really about ballpark estimations in general, if it's the one I read. The title comes from a story about a farmer who wanted to improve his farm--so he wrote to the local university asking for advice. He got various responses, but the one from the Math department began "Consider a spherical cow...". Cows, of course, aren't spherical (more cylindrical), but the need to use such thumbnail esitmations is found in more fields than environmental studies, and is an art worth learning.