23 of 24 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Excellent Discussion of Multivariate Statistics, June 8, 2000
This textbook is a pleasant surprise. It is an excellent introduction to multivariate analysis, much better than I have encountered elsewhere. As the title indicates, the examples are geological such as analysis of spatial distribution of geological features, geochemical analysis, sediment transportation problems, paleontological sampling issues, stratigraphic sequence comparisons, fluvial pattern analysis, etc.
Davis provides a chapter on matrix algebra, emphasizing the mathematical operations that underlie trend surface analysis, principal components, and discriminant functions. I found his geometric approach to eigenvalues and eigenvectors to be more intuitive than traditional algebraic approaches found in most linear algebra texts. I also like the discussion on determinants. I suspect that a reader unfamiliar with matrices and linear algebra might find this introduction to be too concise and a bit overwhelming. But as a review, the chapter was really quite good.
More than 350 pages are devoted to the final three chapters - Analysis of Sequence Maps, Map Analysis, and Analysis of Multivariate Data. These three chapters provide an exceptional discussion of advanced statistical techniques. The mathematics are well explained and the techniques are described in detail, including pitfalls in the mis-application of the various statistical methods.
My copy (14th printing, first edition) includes a section on Fortran IV programming and scatters some Fortran examples across various chapters. While this feature somewhat dates the text, it is at most a distraction and can easily be skipped without any loss of understanding of the statistical methods. The Fortran sections may not have been retained in the second edition (1986). This newer edition apparently provides updated coverage on probability, non-parametric statistics, and Fourier analysis and adds coverage of kriging methods.
In recent years more books on geostatistics have appeared and some are quite good. However, I have noted that the Davis text is invariably included on a short reading list for graduate geostatistics courses. My only concern is that this text has become increasingly difficult to locate. I give it five stars.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Davis Third Edition Review, June 24, 2010
This review is from: Statistics and Data Analysis in Geology (Hardcover)
This is a needed update to an excellent work. It covers the applications of math and statistics to geology, but as a physical anthropologist, I have found it most useful as well. The second edition corrected some major errors in the first edition and this edition cleans up pretty much anything not fixed in the second edition. The new material is welcome.
I have only two real complaints. First, when discussing the characterizing/describing/measuring of shape using Fourier and related techniques, there is no mention of Elliptical Fourier Functions, which have been widely used for some 20 years (see for example . Kuhl FP, Giardina CR.(1982) Elliptic Fourier features of a closed contour. Comput Graph Imag Proc 18: 236-258 and Lestrel PE. (1997) Fourier Descriptors and their applications in Biology. Cambridge University Press, New York.
Second, while rather new, the use of wavelets to measure localized shape features is not mentioned either. They are being used to describe, e.g. fingerprints (as found in the FBI fingerprint database) and for facial recognition. I am not sure of applications in geology, but they certainly must exist. Some of the usages in physical anthropology are sufficiently close to the kinds of questions geologists often ask, that there is certainly a need for some discussion in this book. For examples and much more see: Costa LF, Cesar Jr RM. (2001) Shape Analysis and Classification: Theory and Practice. CRC Press, Boca Raton, Fl.
I'd be satisfied if Dr. Davis would add a chapter or two on these to the book's web site.
Just to make it clear: I have no financial interest in either of the books noted above.
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4.0 out of 5 stars
Excellent tutorial, February 14, 2011
This is an outstanding primer to statistics for earth sciences. In fact, even people in other fields can appreciate this book for its clarity. I use this as a reference all the time in my work.
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