Rachel Fewster Department of Statistics, University of Auckland, Private Bag 92019, Auckland, NZ. Phone: +64 9 373 7599 extn 83946       Fax: +64 9 373 7018 Email: r.fewster@auckland.ac.nz

Oman, 2010

I am an Associate Professor in the Statistics Department of the University of Auckland, New Zealand. Previously I worked in the Research Unit for Wildlife Population Assessment (RUWPA), part of the Statistics Division of the School of Mathematics and Statistics, University of St Andrews in Scotland.

Research and CV:

• here

Research software and web pages:

• Rodent invasion project.
• Analysis of population trends using generalized additive models (GAMs): SPLUS code here and R code here.
• Similarity indices for spatial ecological data: R code and PASCAL code here.
• Portfolio project management for software companies: R code here.

Benford's Law:

• Here is a paper, a talk, and a classroom activity about Benford's Law.

Links:

• Internet search: with choice of search engine. No adverts, pictures or flashing graphics.
• Maths and Statistics links
• Internet maths and statistics resource sites
• Links to statistics departments
• Software and Data
• Statistical societies and journals
• Ecological links
• NZ resources
• Language resources
• Miscellaneous

Maths and Statistics Links:

• Statistical Science Web:   lots of useful stuff, including a catalogue of catalogues, and link to Oz and NZ jobs site. General jobs in Statistics can be found at statistics.com.
• Electronic textbook from StatSoft: complete on-line statistics textbook with clear descriptions of many statistical areas, and including a glossary. Well worth a visit.
• Maths Thesaurus: no more excuses for writing equations that don't rhyme or scan!
• MathWorld: great stock of mathematical theorems, formulae and facts, classified by subject area (Algebra, Calculus, Probability and Statistics, etc). Go to Mathematical Functions to track down that elusive elliptic integral or Hermite polynomial, and to the Wolfram Demonstrations Project to see some models in action.
• Statistics New Zealand: NZ census, population, demographics etc, including a special Datalab. Life tables also available at www.lifetable.de.
• UK national statistics. Population, health, economy, favourite names and all the rest of it.

• Statistics Departments in UK and Irish Universities: links to UK and Ireland Statistics departments. For more details of people and research interests, see the UK directory of academic statisticians.
• Duke University statistics links: links to Statistics departments worldwide.

• R: not unlike S, but free.
• Data and Story Library (DASL): excellent data bank of data sets and stories for teaching statistics, with search-by-topic and search-by-method facilities.
• OzData: further useful data sets for teaching statistics, with a mild Australasian flavour.
• Numerical Recipes Home Page: free online access to the Numerical Recipes books which outline programming solutions to 1200+ common problems. Also includes lists of known bugs and a variety of other services.
• Tex archive: vast collection of packages and documentation, including a LaTeX help system. Australian mirror site here. The contrib archive contains many of the best LaTeX packages (Australian mirror).
• Perl Tutorial: easy tutorial for using perl, a powerful language for editing text files. Written by Nik Silver of the University of Leeds, UK.

• Royal Statistical Society: with links to the newsletter and the four JRSS journals.
• American Statistical Association: with links to the associated journals, including JASA, The American Statistician, and JABES.
• International Biometric Society: with the journals Biometrics and JABES.
• International Statistical Institute: parent of the International Association for Statistical Computing, and link to the journal Computational Statistics and Data Analysis.
• New Zealand Statistical Association: with link to Australian and New Zealand Journal of Statistics.
• Other journals: Biometrika, Communications in Statistics.

Ecological Links:

• British Ecological Society: including links to the four journals Journal of Ecology, Journal of Animal Ecology, Journal of Applied Ecology and Functional Ecology.
• Ecological Society of America.
• Ecological Society of America Journals: includes Ecology, Ecological Monographs, and Bulletin of the Ecological Society of America.

NZ resources:

• New Zealand Herald online: Auckland's daily newspaper.
• Search NZ: web search engine restricted to New Zealand sites.
• NZ Weather forecasts: including short-term mountain forecasts and marine forecasts. A breakdown by city is available from Weather Workshop or One Weather. For impressive snow forecasts see snow-forecast.com, which covers not just NZ but the rest of the world too. Zoom in on the North Island or the South Island or the centre. Alternatively just look at a recent picture of where you want to go. Satellite images and weather radar are available at MetVUW. Current conditions in Auckland are summarized from stations in West Auckland and Glenfield . More great weather-related links at met.net.nz.
• NZ Maps: street maps of the Auckland region, with zoom and search facilities.
• New Zealand White Pages and New Zealand Yellow Pages: all the colour and none of the paper.
• Rideline: click on Journey Planner for the bus routes and times that take you where you want to go. A truly excellent site, it even tells you how many metres you have to walk to the bus stop or all the way. Those brave enough to cycle in Auckland will delight in the Auckland City Cycle Reporting System, where you can report your favourite pothole and then watch it vanish within 14 days.
• Aerial photographs of NZ: high resolution aerial photos of almost the whole country. Here is where I prefer to spend my weekends. To see a more conventional kind of map, the same site offers the Topo Map series. In a truly exciting development, intrepid explorers should now go straight to NZTopoOnline, scroll down to accept the terms and conditions, and start zooming away to get a detailed Topo map of anywhere in New Zealand. Wins my prize for website of the year. The Department of Conservation have a customized (and faster) version here. For a great find-a-place site, try the MapTech Mapserver.
• Te Ara Encyclopedia: a fantastic site giving an in-depth look at the New Zealand Bush, including images and audio. Now is your chance to mystify your colleagues with sounds of kokako emanating from your office.
• Royal Astronomical Society of New Zealand: includes Sun rise and set times and planetary comings and goings.
• Travelpass: rail, coach, and ferry timetables for New Zealand. Air New Zealand goes the same places at higher altitude. Flight information gives today's flight arrival and departure times.

Language resources:

• Webster's dictionary: or try the more-frills Merriam Webster dictionary for some useful usage explanations. The WWWebster Thesaurus can be found here, and the far more comprehensive but less readable Roget's Thesaurus is here. Another nice dictionary page is yourdictionary.com, which also has a collection of links to grammar guides, foreign language resources, and more. An idiom dictionary comes in handy when you know diddly squat about the lingo, while an acronym dictionary is indispensable for those of us who are AD (Acronym Deficient).
• Rhyming dictionary, quotations dictionary, anagram server, crossword puzzle solver: for seekers of inspiration.
• University of Virginia electronic text library: holds thousands of classic texts in electronic format, from Shakespeare to Mark Twain to Lewis Carroll. Great for searching for passages or even for reading the whole book. Here are resources in other languages. Other e-text libraries are at Bibliomania or ReadPrint. Alternatively try 4Shakespeare.com to search the complete works of Shakespeare.
• The Human Languages page: phrasebooks and resources for every on-line language in the world. Ideal for brushing up your Middle English. These are the languages you should devote most attention to.
• AltaVista Translation Service: translates from English to 12 other languages, and vice versa. Be warned, the results can be eccentric!
• Internet Jargon translator: Ever wondered about those mysterious words BTW, ROTFL, FYI, IMHO, OTOH, AFAIK, foo...? Just FWIW.
• Word oddities and trivia: a delightful collection of unusual or interesting words that will keep you speaking in palindromes and pangrams for weeks.
• Elements of style: by William Strunk, 1918. Some useful tips for writing style. Here is how these web pages could be improved.

Miscellaneous:

• Ask Jeeves: Just enter your question and some sort of intelligent response can be expected in seconds. From "Why is the sky blue?" to "What's the difference between a duck?", it seems that there's somebody out there who knows the answer.
• Britannica.com: excellent online encyclopedia. Encyclopedia.com is another, from the Concise Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia. Update (2009) : two useful links for those whose fingers don't automatically type www.wikipedia.org or www.google.com as soon as they come into contact with a computer keyboard.
• The Universal Currency Converter: currency conversions for all major and most minor international currencies.
• Cyberdiet: explains the nutritional content of everything from Banana-Flavored Frosted Flakes to raw Jerusalem artichokes. Good for those of us who like some spinach with our iron. Then you can calculate your Body Mass Index and find out your population percentile. Click on through to the Ideal Weight Calculator where, engagingly, you can discover your "People's Choice" ideal weight: the weight to which others of your body size, shape, and age aspire.
• UK National Rail Journey Planner: how to escape from anywhere in the UK.
• World map viewer: for those whose aspirations extend beyond the British transport network. Displays 15 different map projections centred on your choice of country.
• Flying distances between world airports: for totting up the air-miles or working out how far that new broomstick will take you.
• Knomad: an excellent site providing health details for international travellers. Find out what you need in the way of vaccinations, medications, and precautions, for wherever you plan to go, and for the particular activities you intend to do. It's not free but it's worth it.
• World Factbook: a truly fantastic site with maps, demography, history, geography, flags, and much more for every country you can think of. No map of Mars just yet. Pay a virtual visit to New Zealand or the UK. Then zoom in with streetmap.co.uk.
• Map of the USA: clear depiction of all US states, with links, time zones and current time.
• World time zones: gives current time and standard time around the world. For a quick look at the US zones and times only, try the US Navy clock.
• Meanings of names: now you can find out how to call your child Waterfall Pool, and translate such beauties as Gavivi Jesimae. A more thoughtful site is Think! Baby Names with intriguing statistics showing that A and C are by far the most common initial letters. Alternatively just follow the crowds here and pick one of the top 100 US names of 2004. (Notice that almost 40% of them begin with A or C!) Think! Baby Names has an impressive display of popular names and trend graphs in different countries: my name remains popular everywhere except where I was born. To see your chosen name in semaphore, try finger-spelling it using American Sign Language.
• Cure for hiccups: works for me!
• Netscape colour palette: no more wasted hours sorting out the ff6633's from the cc6699's. Thanks to Snoopy for this page.

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